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individual appointed to the board by a Gen-
eral Assembly. They could appoint the
president of the Senate if they wanted to.
DELEGATE SHERBOW: They could
not for other reasons, but the point is they
could appoint you or me, but suppose they
wanted to appoint the state treasurer.
Suppose they believe the state treasurer is
a man of extreme competence and a man of
experience and a man of tremendous ability.
DELEGATE BOYCE: Suppose there is
no state treasurer, who would they then
appoint if they have no state treasurer?
They are going to have to look for some-
body with the competence and the ability
that he has and I would say the State
would be that much worse off and would
be the loser because you then dissipated all
the abilities, all the department work and
all the talents and scattered and fractured
it among a dozen or more executive depart-
ments. The State will have lost on it.
DELEGATE BOYCE: Would that be an
appointee of the General Assembly or an
appointee of the governor?
DELEGATE SHERBOW: If he has the
office doing the work that the state treas-
urer is doing, he is an appointee of the
governor. If he is named by the General
Assembly as a third member of this board,
he happens to be then a member of the
board appointed by the General Assembly.
If he happens to be the same person, you
just cannot do it under your section 4.23.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Adkins.
DELEGATE ADKINS: I am resisting
the effort to get into this debate but I think
I agree with a note that has just been
handed me which cites a quotation by Mark
Twain which says, "The more you explain
it the more I do not understand it." I will
therefore yield to Delegate Robey.
DELEGATE ROBEY: We have heard
a great deal of discussion about checking
the record, and that I have done.
I would like to go back to the record of
John Dennis. He was treasurer since 1916,
and not 1920. There he also hath served
without blemish. In 1922 there was news
of a break between Governor Ritchie and
his state treasurer, Dennis. Why? Because
Mr. Dennis tried to amend the governor's
reorganization bill in two areas and lost.
There was no secret at that time that
Treasurer Dennis aspired to be governor.
In 1926 Treasurer Dennis advocated Comp-
troller Gorde be the next governor, despite
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the fact that Ritchie wanted him to be the
comptroller. Treasurer Dennis took out an
ad in the Sunday papers that had the title
"Ritchie For U. S. Senator." This would
have cleared the way for Comptroller
Gorde.
In 1923 Delegate Child mentioned he
could not recall any instance of the Gen-
eral Assembly trying to amend the consti-
tution to take care of it, but Delegate
Child, in the General Assembly, did try to
take care of what they felt was an ap-
parent conflict of interest by constitutional
amendment in the spring of 1933. That was
that the Constitution be amended to pro-
hibit the officials of banks and trust com-
panies from holding the office. It is inter-
esting to note that Treasurer Dennis did
not intend to resign as treasurer because
he was the head of a large banking com-
pany in Baltimore.
This was April 1, 1933. One month later,
May 19, 1933, Treasurer Dennis did in fact
resign and admitted that there was an ap-
parent conflict of interest and that is why
he resigned. He said in his position as
state treasurer, many problems had arisen
involving conflict of interest between the
State and its bank depositories and under
the circumstances he deemed it his duty to
the State to withdraw his connection with
the banking institution.
We can come up to recent years, the year
1955, when the Morning Sun of January
8, 1955, had the title, "Byrd May Vie with
Mahoney for the State Job." The State
job that they were talking about was the
state treasurer's position. There were four
other candidates for that position, Hooper
S. Miles, John Wood Logan, George W.
Della, and Emerson C. Harrington, Jr.
There was a headline on February 11,
1960, and the headline read, "Pressman
Hits Dual Role of Miles."
"Pressman charged that a possible con-
flict of interest exists in the fact that the
state treasurer is chairman of the board
of a bank which holds more of the state's
general fund deposits than any other in
Maryland."
That is the Fidelity Baltimore National
Bank, 26 per cent of all money of the State
in deposit.
THE CHAIRMAN: Your time has ex-
pired.
You have two and a half minutes.
DELEGATE JAMES: I will extend a
singular act of mercy to the Convention
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