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THE CHAIRMAN: Do you desire to
speak in opposition?
DELEGATE RYBCZYNSKI: Yes, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN : You may proceed.
DELEGATE RYBCZYNSKI: Mr. Chair-
man, I think it is important that every
delegate here know the concept of eminent
domain. This is the only un-American pro-
vision that you will find in a state consti-
tution. This is in direct opposition to
everything we hold near and dear, the
right of freedom and the right of contract
and the right of property ownership.
What we are saying is that the legis-,
lature has the right to interfere with the
right of contract and the right of property
ownership, to go in and take any person's
house or property or business, take it away
for a stated amount of money.
Now, we talk about the problem of cost.
The whole idea behind this thing is that
the cost is spread amongst all of the citi-
zens of the State of Maryland and is not al-
lowed to be borne by one individual. Now,
if a person after many years of effort and
hard labor is fortunate enough to own a
$10,000 house, is there any reason why
that person should get any less than
$10,000 for his property when it is taken
away from him? And yet this occurs every
day of every week in the State of Mary-
land.
This change relating to damages is
headed toward relieving the damage done
to private individuals by the State of
Maryland. If there is an increase in the
acquisition cost to the State of Maryland,
all that they need to do is to raise the gaso-
line tax. It is what they do anyway, do
they not? Every time a contractor says
that cement has gone up and the cost of
labor has gone up, nobody stops building
roads. They merely increase the tax that
is necessary.
In other words, it is spread amongst all
of the citizens and not one citizen; the
obligation is not on one citizen to take the
lion's share of the damage.
This is an extremely good provision in
this constitution. I hope that the amend-
ment is defeated.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Henderson.
DELEGATE HENDERSON: Fellow
delegates, I, during my time, sat on a good
many of these cases involving taking by
eminent domain and am quite familiar
with the cases in Nichols which is a stand-
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ard authority. I want to suggest that the
problem here is not whether people will be
adequately protected when their property
is taken which gives them a right not only
to the value of the taking, but the inci-
dental damages involved. This, however,
introduces a concept which has had the
unfortunate result, I think, in many states,
of extending this nebulous concept of dam-
age quite apart from the property taken.
Now, when property is taken, you can
have valuations put on by your own ap-
praisers in the states and these matters
can be submitted to a jury including the
incidental damages following from it. But
when the property is not taken, it does not
require much imagination to see that you
are in a cloudy area, that property miles
away could be affected by a particular
change of a road for example. That is the
difficulty that I see. It introduces a per-
fectly nebulous concept which has been
rejected by our legislature and now it
would be written in the vaguest terms into
our constitution itself. I think it would
indeed open a Pandora's box of litigation.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are you ready for
the question?
Delegate Churchill Murray.
DELEGATE E. C. MURRAY: Nothing
that has come to our attention since the
beginning of this convention has concerned
me more than the pain, the injury and
oftentimes the injustice that has resulted
from eminent domain.
In a country that is growing as ours is,
and as ours will, it is inevitable that the
harm from it is widespread. I had no idea
until we had begun hearing witnesses on
this subject, concerning slum clearance in
connection with roads in the cities, that
many times the owners are living in houses
that are not worth much and that are not
worth enough for them to go out and re-
place them.
I have been in the State and all over
the State and I feel very badly. I could
weep were I an actor for the millions and
millions and millions of dollars that the
adoption of this would cost the State of
Maryland, but I do believe that I can an-
swer the question as to how much it
would cost.
It would cost exactly the sum total of
what these individual people are losing
individually now instead of having it
shared by the State, which is in many cases
causing the loss for the good of us as a
whole.
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