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arrangement, and again he answered in the
affirmative.
Now, this specific proposal was intro-
duced by Delegate Charney Harris of the
Committee. The purpose of it, ladies and
gentlemen, is to bring, as much as we can,
to this very sensitive position, an atmos-
phere of non-politics. We suggested and I
think many here concur, that the office of
state's attorney is very much a quasi-
judicial office. It has become over the past
decades very much a partisan political of-
fice.
Now, there is certainly great advantage
to the elective system and I frankly per-
sonally have come around to recognizing
that since I originally suggested the ap-
pointment system. At the same time I do
not think we should entirely give up the
possibility in the elective system of cre-
ating a non-partisan atmosphere. I do not
suggest I am naive enough to recommend
to you that simple cross-filing will make a
non-political office of state's attorneys;
certainly that is not the case.
What I do suggest to you is that it will
bring it as close as we possibly can to a
non-political atmosphere.
Why do we suggest that the political
atmosphere is not the best atmosphere?
This resolves itself into favors to political
and financial benefactors. It evolves into
assistants being chosen for political and not
professional reasons. It evolves itself into
state's attorneys campaigning for political
office rather than efficiency of their office.
I think it is clear that the people do
not know how important and sensitive this
job is. We can draw some conclusion in any
event from the results in the Democratic
primary in Baltimore City in 1956 where
152,000 votes were cast for the office of
governor, and only 80,000 for the office of
state's attorney.
The non-partisan atmosphere which we
suggest would be promoted is not accom-
plished by this amendment. The mind of
the General Assembly to divide into dis-
tricts the state's attorneys districts in the
State would make for more efficient use of
manpower and technology and propel that
office to that distant day when it will be
regarded and become in fact a highly pro-
fessional efficient office designed to play a
coordinated and significant role in crime
suppression, something it will never truly
become while it remains essentially a po-
litical office, despite some of its most tal-
ented and professional, but transient, hold-
ers.
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Now, our method preserves the right of
the people to participate in this selection
and gives the state's attorney a greater in-
centive to act courageously and independ-
ently. There is some merit in placing an
independently elected official in a position
to intervene in cases of governmental or
citizen misconduct, but to the extent this
official is elected on a partisan ticket with
partisan financial and political support — to
that extent this valuable independence is
diminished.
No one suggests it should be partisan,
only that it be elective.
I would now like to address myself to the
question why I have alluded to this matter
of the criminal law enforcement package,
if you will, and the role of the state's at-
torney in this area.
The Committee on the Executive Branch
obviously recognized the relevance of this,
because it provided a most wise provision,
that there could be districts rather than a
state's attorney in every county.
I have already submitted to you and,
therefore, will not repeat, the statistics
which indicate that we have various de-
grees of competence and attention to duty
in all the counties of our State. In Balti-
more City we have a highly efficient and
large staff of thirty-three and relatively
high salaries of $20,000 for the state's at-
torney himself and $20,000 in 1968 for the
deputy and beginning salaries of $7500, I
believe, for his assistants.
But in other counties, we find it is a
completely part-time job with salaries com-
mensurate therewith.
I would like to refer to the State's At-
torney Moylan himself in his statement to
the people of Maryland of which you all
know.
He makes the point that the state's at-
torney's office is part of the same law en-
forcement package as the whole new com-
plex of courts. He points out that twenty-
eight of fifty states establish prosecutors
offices by constitution, but forty-five of
fifty states elect a state's attorney.
Then in response to suggestions that
there be a statewide attorney general to
supervise the state's attorney, he said "To
have an office which can devote at best a
small part of its time to the criminal field,
supervise comparable or even larger offi-
ces", meaning for example his own, "which
are engaged full time in the field, is pat-
ently absurd."
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