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DELEGATE MORGAN: I yield.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Sickles.
DELEGATE SICKLES: If you will
yield I want to announce first that I am
having trouble with my seatmates justify-
ing what we did in the Committee. I ran
out of arguments.
I wonder if you could help me. The ar-
guments given by the Committee of the
Legislative Branch as well as some that
have not been expressed yet, but may — we
may spend all night talking about this —
I think, are quite persuasive.
What really kept us from allowing this
sort of residual sending of the bills back
to the General Assembly at the next regu-
lar session? I cannot see that it does any
harm.
Can you shore me up, reassure me and
my friends too?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Morgan.
DELEGATE MORGAN: Delegate
Sickles, we had a meeting with the legis-
lative liaison committee that was estab-
lished by the General Assembly, acting in
a liaison capacity with the various com-
mittees of this Convention.
We had a meeting with that committee
and they expressed the opinion that it was
quite awkward in a new session of the Gen-
eral Assembly to start right off reconsider-
ing bills that had been vetoed at the last
session.
Then we thought it might be possible to
go to the New Jersey plan. Under the New
Jersey Plan you have an automatic veto
session of the General Assembly 45 days
after the sine die adjournment of the reg-
ular session; that is because the governor
has 45 days within which to veto bills.
At that special session all the vetoed
bills are returned to the General Assembly
and then it acts on them one way or the
other.
We asked the legislative liaison commit-
tee about an automatic session or discre-
tionary session and they said that if any
member was interested enough and wanted
a vote on his vetoed bill, the leaders of the
General Assembly would call them back
anyway. The majority of that committee
at least, felt you might just as well make
it an automatic recall, so we made it an
automatic recall, that is, in the draft that
we proposed to the Executive Branch Com-
mittee. When the automatic session came
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up before the Legislative Branch Commit-
tee, I think it was Governor Tawes who
called attention to the fact that sometimes
there might be only one bill that was
vetoed and it might be vetoed because the
attorney general had given an opinion that
it was unconstitutional, and there would be
no sense in having the General Assembly
come back to reconsider that bill.
So then we went back to the discretion-
ary session, and that is how it all came out.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Sickles.
DELEGATE SICKLES: I wonder if the
Chairman of the Committee on the Legis-
lative Branch would yield to a question?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gallagher,
do you yield to a question?
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: Yes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Sickles.
DELEGATE SICKLES: Did you notice
the comment of the Chairman of the Com-
mittee on the Executive Branch, that there
seemed to be concern by this legislative
liaison committee that there was a burden
on the next regular session of the General
Assembly. I think perhaps that is because
in the past, as you will recall, it had to be
the first order of business.
Now, is it the purpose of your amend-
ment that there be a constitutional re-
quirement that these vetoed bills be con-
sidered as the first order of business at
the next general session?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gallagher.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: There is
nothing in there to that effect but that is
certainly the way I would anticipate it
would be handled, because the more time
that elapses between the time the governor
vetoed it and the time it is taken up for
reconsideration, the less accurate people
are going to be about why they would
override it.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Sickles.
DELEGATE SICKLES: Would it not
be better to leave flexibility so that those
who come back from far reaches of the
State would have a little time to look at it,
to consider the problem again.
It seems to me your language would al-
low this latitude.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gallagher.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: The lan-
guage would allow it. I state my own per-
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