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here to speak for himself — he did say on
reflection he called the executive director
and asked for the right to reconsider the
statement that he had made, and I have
therefore not elected to quote the earlier
statement because I think everybody from
time to time changes his mind.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Boyce.
DELEGATE BOYCE: Thank you, Mr.
Vice-Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any fur-
ther questions of the Vice-Chairman? Dele-
gate Henderson.
DELEGATE HENDERSON: Is it not
true that the tax collecting department is
set up by a separate department setup by
the governor?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Adkins.
DELEGATE ADKINS: It is certainly
true in most states.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any fur-
ther questions? The Chair hears no fur-
ther questions, and the Chair calls on Dele-
gate Sybert to present the Minority Report.
Delegate Sybert, come forward to the read-
ing desk, please.
DELEGATE SYBERT: Mr. Chairman
and fellow delegates: I think we have be-
fore us in the question we are now dis-
cussing a narrow issue, should the state
comptroller be elected by the people as has
been true for the last one hundred and
sixteen years, or should he be appointed by
the governor. The Committee Recommenda-
tions would provide that the chief fiscal
officer whom I equate with the comptroller
as we have known him, would be the single
head of a principal department, and under
section 4.21, I think it is, of the Commit-
tee Recommendations, the governor would
appoint the heads of all principal depart-
ments, and those heads would serve at his
will. The minority, of course, feels that the
time-tested method of electing the comp-
troller and thereby having an independent
chief fiscal officer of the State responsible
directly to the people and not the creature
of the governor, has stood the test of time
and has worked well for the State and for
the people. The presiding speaker, Vice-
Chairman Adkins said that we are coming
to or maybe he said we have crossed the
Rubicon, that because of the growth of the
State, we must make the governor, in effect,
all powerful. I do not think the simile is
very apt because the crossing of the Rubi-
con was made by Julius Caesar after he
had been successful in the Gallic wars; and
when he came to the Rubicon, a small
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stream, he had to decide whether to march
on Rome, notice having been served on him
that if he came, he would be met by force
because others wanted to control the gov-
ernment of Rome. Caesar had to determine
whether to march on Rome and assume the
position of dictatorship. He did march on
Rome with his victorious army, he over-
came his opponents, he did set himself up
as a dictator; and we all know what hap-
pened. Caesar had his Brutus.
Friends, we do not want to put the State
of Maryland in the position of setting up
a virtual dictator which has stood us in
such good stead since the Constitution of
1851, under the plea that things have be-
come so big that we have to turn them
over to one head, one person elected by the
people; and on that plea, if we heed it, to
scrap the position of state comptroller.
Just briefly, the state comptroller, as I
think has been mentioned, has 900 em-
ployees serving under him, all as far as I
know protected by the merit system.
The office was not ever that big until
when after World War II, the increasing
business of the State, manufacturing busi-
ness of all kinds required the state govern-
ment to become larger, and the office grew
to its present proportions. There are now
twelve departments in the office of the
state comptroller. Very quickly those de-
partments are the General Department, the
License Bureau, the Gasoline Tax Division,
the Alcoholic Beverages Division, the In-
come Tax Division, the Admissions Tax
Division, the Bureau of Revenue Estimates,
the Retail Sales Tax Division, the Central
Payroll Division which handles the payroll
for 22,500 employees, the Cigarette Tax
Unit, the Data Processing Division, and the
Abandoned Property Division. I think that
order is the order in which those depart-
ments were added to the office of the comp-
troller.
By law the comptroller is the chief fiscal
officer of the State, the manager of the
state's money. He is charged, of course,
with the collection of that money and the
management of the state's revenues and
the supervision and control of expendi-
tures. One of the most important functions
of the comptroller is to exercise a check,
a pre-check on the state's money as it is
paid out. When a voucher comes in from
a department, the controller must and does
check the voucher to ascertain whether it
is a matter which has been authorized by
law or in the budget. If he finds that it
has been so authorized, he then checks the
funds in that account, and if the funds are
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