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DELEGATE CASE: If you mean the
exemptions for corporation inventory, ma-
chinery and tools — is that the kind of
exemptions you mean?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Miller.
DELEGATE B. MILLER: I do not mean
that. I mean the type of exemption which
the B&O Railroad now enjoys.
DELEGATE CASE: It is the only one
of its kind.
DELEGATE B. MILLER: Are you
sure?
DELEGATE CASE: My understanding is that there were two, Greenmount Ceme-
tery and the B&O Railroad. The Green-
mount Cemetery exemption has expired, so
that the B&O is the only one that has it.
I believe there will be at a later time
more discussion on that in another section
of our deliberations.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Miller.
DELEGATE B. MILLER: You intend
to make a further report?
DELEGATE CASE: We do not, Dele-
gate Miller, but it is my understanding —
and I will be corrected by the Chair on
this — that there will be something put in
the constitution on this point.
THE CHAIRMAN: There is a matter
pending before another committee, the mat-
ter just spoken about.
Delegate Henderson.
DELEGATE HENDERSON: Returning
to the farm exemption again, although a
great deal has been said about it, is it your
view that there could he a valid classifica-
tion so that a farmer who continues farm-
ing only for the purpose of making capital
gain in five or ten years due to the appre-
ciation of his land and suitability for de-
velopment purposes, and the developer who
buys the farm and continues to farm it
with the same motive would pay a different
rate of taxation — one would be three
times the value of the other?
DELEGATE CASE: Judge Henderson,
what I said was that a criteria could lie
written which might — and I underscore
the word "might" — lead to that result, if
the finders of fact found it to be justified.
Let me say this, sir: In the present law
— and I will be glad to read it to you
verbatim, if you care to listen to it —
there are twenty-nine criteria which the
State Taxation Commission or the State
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Department of Assessments and Taxation
suggested as being tests. In addition to
that, there are four criteria in the statute.
Additionally, there is a statement of gen-
eral purpose in the statute.
Now, you, as a long-time distinguished
jurist know, as I think I know, that where
you have fact questions what you seek to
do is to test the existing facts as they are
brought forth in the record with the tests,
or match them up with the tests which the
legislature and the administrative body
has set, and then you reach a judgment,
and sometimes — and I cannot say this in
this particular field, because we have had
no experience with it as the Court of Ap-
peals ruled out the right to make such
judgments in the Alsop case, but in other
cases the valuation of stock in closely held
corporations, for example, the determina-
tion of the applicability of the internal
revenue code, section 5.31, you find in al-
most identical situations the court going
in different directions.
What we seek to do is to give the Gen-
eral Assembly in the first instance, and the
administrative agency in the ultimate in-
stance, the freedom to make meaningful
judgments so that the bona fide farmer
will be protected, but the obvious land
speculator will not.
DELEGATE HENDERSON: I take it
what you are saying is that you do believe
that a valid constitutional distinction can
be drawn between a farmer who does want
the same thing as the speculator, even
though they may both be speculating. Is
that true?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: I am not saying it
is a constitutional distinction. I am saying
we are establishing a classification which
we are defining by the use of the words
"agricultural use."
Now, that is as far as the Constitution
goes. What is agricultural use depends in
the first instance upon the judgment made
by the administrative board, but in the
last analysis, of course, by the courts in-
terpreting that judgment, whether it be
right or wrong.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case, if
the Chair may paraphrase Delegate Hen-
derson's last question so that the record
may be clear, I think he was suggesting
that if you had two pieces of property as
to which the fact situations with respect
to character of property and uses were
identical and as to which the fact situa-
tions were identical in all other respects ex-
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