HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TAWES ADMINISTRATION,

1959-1963

On a sunny but chilly January day in 1959, J. Millard Tawes stood
on the east portico of the old State House in Annapolis and made
his first speech to the people of Maryland as their Governor. It was
not a long speech, this inaugural address, but in it the Governor
observed the vast changes that were taking place in Maryland —
changes creating new challenges and new problems which in turn
would require new programs and new policies in government.

"In common with many other states," he said, "Maryland has
reached a stage of development where great strides forward must be
taken if we are to keep up with the times. I conceive it to be the
principal task of my Administration to achieve these new standards
and at the same time to preserve the financial integrity of the State."

The General Assembly had been in session for several days, and
Governor Tawes lost no time in presenting a program with which he
hoped to accomplish these objectives. The plan he presented to leg-
islators was bold but not drastic. Some of the proposals represented
pledges he had made in the recent campaign—a campaign that pro-
duced for him the greatest majority ever received by a candidate for
Governor. Others were the product of his many years of experience
in government, observing its processes and thinking about its im-
provement.

The most highly controversial of the measures before that first
session of the General Assembly was a bill to reorganize the lower
court system in Baltimore City, eliminating the positions of part-
time trial magistrates and substituting for them full-time judges. For
years these trial magistracies in Baltimore had been used as a prin-
cipal source of political patronage, and certain political forces there
fought the reform measure savagely. But in the end, the Governor's
program, creating the Municipal Court of Baltimore City, succeeded,
although a "party call"—an action in which the executive applies the
full force of his prestige as a political leader—was required to ob-
tain passage of the bill.

The significance of this accomplishment, aside from the obvious

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