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cutting the budget of the university sub-
mitted to him by the governor.
Now, I have on my desk the present
budget of the university and the proposed
budget for the coming year. I think that
the delegates should know that these budg-
ets involve very substantial sums of money.
Last year, for example, the working
budget of the university was just over
seventy-one million dollars. This year the
Board of Regents requested a working
budget of eighty-three million dollars, but
the point I seek to make is that only last
Friday the governor of Maryland cut the
requested increases of some nine million
dollars by approximately six million dol-
lars — the largest budget cut that the uni-
versity has ever experienced in its exist-
ence.
What the right of self-management would
have done and does do under the statute
which now obtains is to give to the ad-
ministration of the university the right to
allocate within a program funds which
have been set aside on a line item basis.
The university does not have nor has it
ever exercised the right to allocate among
the thirteen major programs contained in
its budget. All that the right would have
done, if it had been granted constitutionally,
would have been to permit, as I have said
before, within one program the university
to allocate or to re-allocate in a different
manner from the way in which the budget
was originally prepared.
Now, why is this important? It is im-
portant for two reasons: it secures to the
university the right to keep faith with its
instructional staff.
As you all probably know, to obtain
qualified people to teach in our institutions
of higher learning today is a herculean
task. You just cannot find good qualified
instructors and when you get them, the
time often comes when their salaries have
to be increased. The university has exer-
cised its right of fiscal self-management
from time to time to do this very thing.
In one important case of note, it was
able to keep perhaps the best brains in the
field of solid state physics on the campus
of the university for a period of twelve
years. This man now heads one of the
leading graduate schools in this country,
but it was through fiscal autonomy that we
were able to keep this man in Maryland
for the benefit of the Maryland children
that we sent to that university for that
period of time.
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In a second area, we find that the uni-
versity is competing daily with other em-
ployers for administrative staff, secretaries,
bookkeepers, key punch operators, and the
whole array of people who go to make up
this vast institution. The university is con-
stantly in competition with big employers
at College Park such as the federal govern-
ment, and many manufacturers in that
area, and this right of self-management
permits an adjustment of the pay scale for
these people without the necessity of going
through all the rigors of a budget amend-
ment and all of the red tape that this in-
volves.
The first field is research. It might in-
terest the delegates to know that the Uni-
versity of Maryland today will conduct
and is conducting a research program of
something in excess of twenty million dol-
lars. There is no place in the State of
Maryland that this program does not reach.
It reaches the Chesapeake Bay, the to-
bacco farmer, the corn farmer, the wheat
farmer, business, economics, it reaches
medicine, it reaches dentistry, and law, and
all phases of life in our State.
This right has permitted the university
to secure more grants than any other in-
stitution, save Johns Hopkins, in this area.
These, then, were the reasons why the
university came to this Convention and
sought constitutional recognition of the
right.
I should like to say two additional things
about this subject. One is that it is a
devisive subject. I think, Mr. Chairman,
you and I have been associated in various
matters for a period of twenty years and
I think it is fair to say, sir, that this is
the only thing in which we found ourselves
on the opposite ends of the poles.
I should also like to point out to you, and
each of you, that the university has not
through any of its employees or agents or
people that it might influence sought one
vote on this convention floor for this propo-
sition.
I have answered questions when people
have asked me, but I think it is, and I
hope it is, helpful to you that this matter
was brought to you for your consideration
without the pressure, without the tactics
that might have been employed and with-
out the systematic buttonholing of dele-
gates and all the rest of the paraphernalia
which many years ago the university was
accused of doing. Let me say, Mr. Chair-
man, that this matter is now concluded. I
hope that it is happily concluded. The uni-
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