many events and many developments that give me a great measure
of personal satisfaction and pride. Notably among these are the per-
formances in office of the men and women I have selected to help me
administer the affairs of this State. I cannot undertake a listing of
all the names and all the deeds here, but I will say that high on that
list is John B. Funk, who, as Director and Chairman of our State Roads
Commission, has impressed us all with his energy, his resourcefulness
and his ability to get things moving. The same, certainly, can be said
of the other members of the Commission—of John J. McMullen, William
B. Owings, Paul J. Bailey, Lansdale G. Clagett, Harley P. Brinsfield
and Thomas N. Kay. This is a splendid group of men, acting in concert
to give the people of Maryland the best roads possible for the amount of
money we are spending. I expect great things of this Commission during
my term of office.

One of the first acts of this Commission was to propose a bold and
imaginative scheme to rescue our twelve-year roads program from a sea
of trouble in which it floundered. It must be said that our twelve-year
plan, although apparently well-conceived and properly fashioned in the
beginning, has not stood the test of time and now stands as an impediment
to an orderly and efficient system of highway construction and rehabili-
tation. This is not said in criticism of the men who drafted the twelve-
year program seven years ago. We live in an age of change and in-
stability., and planning over a long period of time in such circumstances
becomes a most difficult task. And so, until we perfect our prophetic
faculties, we must expect to revise our planning from time to time. I
concur wholeheartedly with the State Roads Commission in its decision
that that time has been reached with regard to our highway program
in Maryland.

When it took office last June, the new Commission made a careful
analysis of conditions and reached the conclusion that we could move
in three possible directions in the expenditure of the remaining five
years worth of money in our twelve-year program. First, it said that
the some $414 million left in the program could be supplemented by
revenues produced by additional taxation, so that the entire twelve-
year program could be completed on schedule. Next, it said, we can go
along as we have been going, following the rigid prescriptions of the
yellow book in accordance with the law as it is now written. Finally,
the Commission pointed out that it is possible to remove the restrictions
of the twelve-year program in such a way as to permit us to build a con-
tinuous network of heavily-traveled thoroughfares in every part of the
State—Mr. Funk's so-called "backbone" program.

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