ment for processing income tax returns, and our experience in this area
has served as a model for many other states, including the much larger
and much richer New York. These are matters about which you read or
hear little. But they are matters which should be of interest and
satisfaction to you, as good citizens.

I can report, also, that you have a strong, stable—and, yes, pro-
gressive—governmental program in Annapolis, supported by a sound
and sane fiscal policy. You hear and read too little about this, and
I know that as citizens and taxpayers you have an acute interest in
the knowledge that the money you pay in taxes is being spent wisely.
In our broad purpose to give Marylanders the kind of governmental
services they require, we have attempted to streamline for efficiency many
State agencies responsible for providing these services.

Let me list some of them:

A reorganized State Roads Commission, which, with a change in
policy inaugurated during the first year of my term, is building more
miles of new highway than have ever been built before in the history of
the State, and which, to my own certain knowledge, is keeping abreast
of the severe motor transportation requirements of our time.

A reconstituted Department of Tidewater Fisheries, which, the best
authorities tell me, has done more already for the conservation of our
vital marine resources than had been done for the preceding fifty years.

A new State Planning Department, which for the first time provides
the State with an agency staffed and equipped to give recognition to the
urgent need of up-to-date planning practices in a State beset by the
problems of unparalleled growth and unprecedented urbanization.

The creation of a new State Tax Court and a new Department of
Assessments and Taxation, separating the administrative and quasi-
judicial functions of the old State Tax Commission, a move which
students of good government have said was long overdue.

When it has become evident that additional services for the people
were needed, we have set up the agencies to provide them.

Let me list some of them:

A new Department of Economic Development, which, for the first
time, places Maryland on an equal, or nearly equal, footing with other
states in the fierce competition for new industry and new business, and
which is attempting to exploit to the advantage of all our citizens the
neglected resource, tourism.

292