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subcommittee who have done the lion's
share of this matter before you now. This
brings us up to this situation as of 10:10
tonight.
It was thought at this stage that per-
haps I would give a broad brush treat-
ment, a wide angle view of what we are
approaching and then seek the assistance
and turn it over to Delegate Hardwicke
who has lived with this and is on top of all
the matters, and he in turn will, if neces-
sary, call on the chairman of the individual
substantive committees should any sticky
questions develop.
GP-13 consists of two main parts. One is
a schedule of transitional provisions. The
other is schedule of legislation. There is a
difference between these two.
The schedule of transitional provisions
is of constitutional force and cannot be
amended or repealed except by constitu-
tional process and fiat. It can only be al-
tered through constitutional amendment.
Because of this it was thought that it
would be more orderly not to include these
transitional provisions in the body of the
constitution itself, but to separate them
from the constitution -which in itself would
have permanent effect but as the transi-
tional period provisions fade out, they would
die of their own weight and natural causes.
The schedule of legislation, however, is
of a different animal, and is of limited
duration in time. These contain provisions
to be enacted by this Convention and in-
tended to be of legislative force, and can
be in time repealed, amended, or handled
in any other way by the General Assembly.
The schedule of legislation consists of
two main bodies. One category are those
provisions included in the prior constitu-
tion and not fully implemented by legisla-
tion, which this constitution has determined
not to include in the constitution because
they are matters which should be properly
dealt with by the General Assembly. The
second category are items of legislation
necessary to implement the provisions of
this, your new constitution, the enactment
of which could not await General Assembly
action.
In preparing both the schedule of transi-
tional provisions and schedule of legisla-
tion, an analysis was made of both provi-
sions of the new constitution and provi-
sions of the old Constitution as sent to us
early in these convention days by Presi-
dent's Memo No. 13. This is a very rough,
wide angle approach to the provisions of
GP-13. I would then ask Delegate Hard-
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wicke to give you the details of it and
answer any questions that might come
forth.
(At this point, Second Vice-President
William James assumed the Chair.)
DELEGATE JAMES (presiding) : Dele-
gate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Ladies and
gentlemen of the Convention, I think that
in going through GP-13 you should have
the blue copy on one hand and the memo-
randum on the other. I suggest that as-
suming the Chair approves that we go
through it section by section.
Section 1, which is a definition of the
term prior constitution, which will be used
to refer to the Constitution of 1867 as
amended.
Section 2 is broken into two parts as to
incumbents. The first two sentences refer
to constitutional officers. The last sentence
refers to nonconstitutional public officers.
DELEGATE JAMES (presiding) : Dele-
gate Hardwicke, would you explain what
you are hitting first?
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: We are do-
ing the transitional provisions. These tran-
sitional provisions, as Delegate Boyer just
stated, all have constitutional weight. In
other words, this is part of the constitu-
tion and I noticed a great many of you
referred to it as transitory. They are tran-
sitory and transitional, transitory in the
sense they are not permanent. All these
transitional provisions when you get into
personal rights and so forth have expira-
tion dates attached to them. So in the
transitional provisions these are parts of
the constitution. Be careful to distinguish
those from the legislative provisions which
are just statute law. In other words, this
Convention is passing statute law and the
statute law begins on page 15, called
schedule of legislation.
This statute law, as Delegate Boyer
stated, will be effective July 1, 1968, but on
July 2, 1968, the General Assembly of
Maryland can meet and cancel every bit
of it. It is subject to the legislature. So it
has no lasting effect whatsoever. The tran-
sitional provisions, however, are aimed at
taking over the old Constitution with the
new constitution gradually in a period of
three or four years terminating in most
instances no later than January 6, 1971.
The first thing is going through the tran-
sitional provisions which are part of the
constitution of constitutional weight not
subject to change by the General Assembly.
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