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DELEGATE WILLONER: i wanted to speak in favor.
(Laughter)
THE CHAIRMAN: You may have the floor.
DELEGATE WILLONER: I think it is an excellent
idea. I think it is interesting when I asked a question
of Delegate Gallagher why they used July first. He said,
well, that was the beginning of a fiscal year and that was
as good a day as any. But with the extention of the legis-
lature, it is going to be even longer before the laws are
published, and it has always been a cardinal principal of
the common law that when a person commits a crime that he
ought to have some knowledge that it is in fact a crime. I
know as a prosecutor we wouldn't find until months later
that it was a crime, that there was some new crime.
We had a conflict of interest by the way in
Prince Georges County that we didn't even know was on the
books until about three or four months after it was en-
acted when we finally got a copy of it. It was interesting
that Mr. Gallagher said that he felt in the committee's
wisdom this should not be part of the Constitution, but the
wisdom didn't seem as great to me as the wisdom in making