programs of all times, including the authorization of a second Bay
crossing, a new Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, bridges across the Patuxent
River and the Sinepuxent Bay and a vast enlargement of the State's
bonding authority to step up the highway construction program. No
matter that the General Assembly took a bold step to eliminate the
present hodgepodge of juvenile services by uniting these services in
a single department, thus affording the public a greater measure of
safety against the anti-social activities of juvenile delinquents. No
matter that legislation was adopted to control the indiscriminate sale
of handweapons; or that safety laws were strengthened by requiring
16 and 17-year-old youths to have 30 hours of driving before receiving
their licenses to drive.

The Director of the Department of Chesapeake Bay affairs has been
quoted as saying fisheries legislation adopted by the 1966 session is
the most significant development in marine conservation that Mary-
land has experienced in 50 years. He had in mind, among other things,
a bill authorizing his Department to close oyster bars to allow oysters
to grow to a marketable size, as well as measures regulating dredging
and limited the sale of rockfish. The Insurance Commissioner told
reporters that his Department "batted 1, 000 per cent" in comprehen-
sive insurance legislation designed to extend additional protection to
Maryland citizens, both policy holders and claimants. He said that
he as Commissioner, through legislation passed at the session, had been
given the tools he needed to drive the undesirable and in financially
unsound insurance companies out of the State. Adopted at the session
was a budget—true, the largest, but the most far-reaching annual fiscal
program in the history of the State—a budget providing for substantial
expansions and improvements in programs so vital to the health, hap-
piness and prosperity of the people—programs of education, public
health, mental hygiene, road building, park expansion, public safety.
But the Cooper-Hughes Bill, the most drastic tax measure to be pre-
sented to the Legislature in our time, went down in defeat. It passed
the Senate but failed by two votes in the House of Delegates. And
so, we are told, we have a "do-nothing" Legislature and an executive
office devoid of leadership, or so it is charged by a hostile press and
by politicians haunted by ambition and desperately seeking an issue
upon which they can propel themselves to undeserved fame.

I was deeply disappointed when the Cooper-Hughes Bill died on
the floor of the House of Delegates on the final night of the regular
session. The slim margin of defeat heightened the disappointment.
I have said—and I repeat—that I made a greater effort to bring about