248 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

Q. Have you discussed the mandate prepared for the Court of Ap-
peals, or anything like that?

A. No, I have not.

Q. Do you think they might not be able to handle this?

A. As a matter of practice they have always been willing, where laws
that are directly affecting the public interest are involved, to accelerate
the position of the matter on the docket and render an early decision.

Q. Governor, would you read that statement for us, please?
A. Yes.

The State Comptroller has been sniping at the tax program
ever since it was enacted by the 1967 Maryland Legislature. But
his potshots, increasing in frequency of late, have always come
from an oblique angle and never directly. He has yet to question
the merits of the program or the need by local governments for
the revenue and additional taxing authority which will relieve
the burdens on the local property tax rates.

First, he claimed to have discovered loopholes in the income tax
provisions of the new law — a section that his own top aides
helped draft and then reviewed word for word and line by line
before the bill became law. All of the suggestions they made
were incorporated in the bill, and the so-called loopholes have
yet to be proved defects.

Now the Comptroller has raised serious questions about the
constitutionality of the act, propounding a series of five questions
to the Attorney General and requesting that he answer them as
soon as possible. I'm advised by Dr. Paul Cooper, the Director
of the State Fiscal Research Bureau, that all of these questions
were raised when the bill was under consideration in the Legis-
lature. In each instance, the Attorney General's office responded,
either verbally or in writing, that the provisions were valid. I
also was advised in a written opinion from the Attorney General
that the act was constitutional before I signed it into law.

In the hope of ending this political charade and clearing up
any doubts the Comptroller may have created in the public mind,
I requested the Attorney General — and incidentally he has
agreed — to immediately initiate court proceedings for a declara-
tory judgment on the constitutionality of the law. I have asked
him to include in this petition the five questions propounded by