140 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

A. I don't think the City property tax is going to come down, no.
The tremendous pressures the City is under to furnish a better edu-
cation from the NEA, recently, is going to make it very difficult to
hold the City budget just where it is, as far as I'm concerned. And i£
I ever saw an article that was timely in revealing that this was not a
frivolous expedition into wasteful spending, it was this article coming
out just about the time that some of the City politicians were indicat-
ing that they were going to slice the City budget to the bone. Slicing
budgets to the bone is a very popular thing, but sometimes it's very
shortsighted if it's eliminating vital services.

Q. Governor, how does the NEA study make the City look as far as
rehabilitating itself?

A. I think the City has made, and is continuing to make, a pretty
good effort to rehabilitate itself. I can't fault the NEA for saying that
some of the goals haven't yet been met. But I don't think that the
City should be criticized, because I think the officials have tried to
meet the goals. They have been restricted by not having the where-
withal to go about it for many years. Let's see what they do with the
new program before we criticize. It was such things as the NEA criti-
ticized in its report that made us realize — when I say us I mean the
people on the bipartisan committee that conceived the tax reform that
was enacted at the session — realize that we had to have this. We
couldn't let these old City schools just fall down in mortar and bricks
and send the students somewhere else, doubled up. We had to do
something. And we have done something and we're catching the very
dickens for it, and I suppose we're going to continue to catch the
dickens for it, but we still feel pretty good because we know we did
the right thing.

Q. Are you getting a lot of mail now protesting the tax?

A. Oh yes, a lot of mail. It's at a fairly consistent level. I'll receive
over my desk sometimes ten letters a day about objection to paying
the taxes, objection to the graduated income tax, and objection gen-
erally to the cost of government rising.

Q. Governor, do you have any definite plans as to your office in
Maryland or in the suburbs of Washington?

A. Yes, the office is being put together by Mr. Bresler over there, and
I believe he was working on a situation where we were going to re-
ceive quarters over there, rent free or at a very minimal figure for the
year. I haven't had a chance to talk to him in the past few days. I