11,723

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country boy myself and it has occurred to me that the

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Committee on State Finance and Taxation and the Committee of

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the Whole have already made the decision that we are going

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to legislate in this Constitution in this particular area

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by deciding what the only mandated classification of

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property will be, and they have given elaborate rationale

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in their committee report and in an explanation on the floor

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as to what the objective of this language was, and it

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seemed to me that there was a serious contradiction in

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their explanation of what the objective was. In one case

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they said their objective was to help the bona fide farmer

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but not the speculator, and in another place they said there

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would not be a reasonable distinction to classify one farm

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as agricultural use when its owner was a farmer and classify

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the adjoining farm as something else when the owner was not

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a farmer but might in some cases be a land speculator. His

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objective in the use of the land was not agriculture but

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otherwise, so it occurred to me if we were going to

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legislate anyway we should at least attempt to legislate to

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achieve our objective.

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THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Adkins.