My Administration has tried to find ways of escaping the pitfalls of
surplus financing. When I submitted to the General Assembly last
February my budget for the coming fiscal year, I had found in the prep-
aration of it that our revenue estimates for the year exceeded our require-
ments, even with substantial improvements and expansions of service
which I was recommending, by a sum in excess of $12 million. Keeping
in mind the perils of surplus financing, and recalling the unhappy ex-
perience of my predecessor in 1957 and 1958, when surpluses were used
as current revenues, I recommended that $12 million be appropriated
into a revenue deficiency fund, and, if not used for a deficiency, to
become available for use in fiscal 1962. I was preparing for possible lean
years ahead. The General Assembly accepted my recommendations, but
I assure you that guarding that $12 million against the pressures and
demands that arose during the recent 30-day session was a most difficult
task.

The temptation to splurge is most persistent when there is a tidy sum
of money in the bank. Another temptation we have to resist is the idea
that the spending of large sums of money will, of itself, bring good
results. That fallacy—the curse of Mammon—I suppose is a product of
too much materialism in our way of thinking.

Now, I hope I am not misunderstood here. Money may be the root of
all evil, but no one would be foolish enough in our society to try to get
along without it. Certainly the State of Maryland cannot be operated
without it, and without plenty of it. The point I make is that money,
at home and in your government, should be spent wisely—always with
the knowledge, after careful study, of what is sought and what it may be
expected to produce. There mere expenditure of money will not assure
good schools, good public health, good law enforcement, good anything
else. It must be spent wisely. And to spend it wisely requires careful
planning.

While I believe in spending the money of the taxpayers wisely and
economically, giving them full value for what they are required to spend,
I am no advocate of austerity, penny-pinching programs. Ours is a
rapidly-growing, progressive State and it would be unreasonable to ex-
pect expenditures for its operation to remain static in that growth and
that progress. We cannot curtail services and expect continued advance-
ment. We must, on the contrary, expand services in proportion to the
progress we make.

The budget for the fiscal year which begins next July 1, for example,
calls for a $28 million increase in general fund appropriations, an in-

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