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at the moment, but the Department of the
Budget at that time was headed up by
Walter Kirkman, one of the great public
servants of the State of Maryland, who
arranged for all of the details which have
since been incorporated by his successors,
Mr. Rennie and Mr. Slicher. After Mr.
Kirkman's retirement he was succeeded by
Mr. Rennie who only retired this past year.
What the governor does is to have his
director of the budget go through all of
the budget requests, all of the require-
i ments, and all the laws that have been
j passed in order to determine what must go
into this budget. This is not a perfunctory
rubber stamp arrangement. The director
of the budget holds these hearings. Every
j department head is really put on the stand.
If any of you chairmen think that being
up here is exposure that sometimes is not
of the lightest sort, let me tell you that
f what the department heads go through
with the director of the budget would
f make our job up here feel sweet and nice,
[ because they have really got to show a
I tough-minded individual that the money
f they are asking for is required.
Now all of these hearings at one time
| were just by the budget director with his
1 cissistants. Later he acquired staff analysts
I \vho are people interested in particular de-
| oartments. They became experts in those
t areas and then as .time went on and the
| legislature through the creation of the
fiscal research bureau became interested in
the creation of the budget, they began to
sit in from time to time, in the creation of
the budget.
We are hoping that out of the legisla-
tive article in this constitution there will
come a greater concept of cooperation be-
tween the legislature and the executive
branches in the creation of the budget.
Now remember it is an executive budget,
but the people have the right to know and
every governor has felt that up until that
point where all the requests come in and
the hearings take place, the public does
have a right to know and the legislature
has a perfect opportunity to participate.
But when all of this is determined, then
it is the governor's job, because under the
Maryland system this is an executive budg-
et and it is his job. Then he does go into
, executive session with his advisors and he
£ determines where he will cut, where he
will enlarge, where he will expand and
i where he will contract, because he has a
I big problem: raising taxes, providing for
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every particular request program that
comes along. He must decide what to do.
This is why you have a governor. He is
the man who must make these decisions.
This is done by him, and when it is ready,
the budget is then sent to the General
Assembly.
To give you an idea of what it is, most
of you have seen this and I hope you
have not been carrying it around because
it is almost in weight a deadly weapon by
reason of its thickness and its weight. This
is the Maryland state budget, as thick as
it is, line after line of the items showing
what the state is going to have to pay.
Now, it is divided, as you know, into
general appropriations and into a capital
budget, and we will come to that in just
a moment or two. But the governor in sub-
mitting this to the General Assembly as a
governor's budget, as an executive budget,
then submits it within a certain number of
days after the legislature convenes.
Now, here we come to our very first
problem. If the governor is in office and
this is his second, third or fourth year of
office, there is no great problem. He has
been conferring with his director of the
budget; he has been conferring with his
staff; it is his budget and he is aware of it.
But where a new governor is elected and
comes into office, this creates a problem.
The election is over in November. Some-
times it takes three or four days to find
out that he is elected. Sometimes it is
known almost immediately. With present
computer systems, they try to tell you who
it will be before the election is even over
and I will not put in this permanent
record some of the mistakes that have been
made in that field.
But anyway, the governor then having
this budget if he has been in office is
aware of it and it is his budget. But what
do you do with a governor as just happened
with Governor Agnew, who is elected in
November and takes office early in Janu-
ary?
We have, as you will note, as we go
along in a little while, provided for a
method by which the budget shall be pre-
sented. We do not consider this as being
so completely frozen as not to warrant
further consideration, because we are
asking the Committee on Style to tie this
in with the executive committee provisions,
so that the two will be together.
We could not wait, of course, for their
determination. We think we have tied it in
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