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it does anything, it seems to me to add to
the powers of municipal corporations.
The Local Government Committee gave
this more than adequate consideration, and
we adopted three sections on municipal
corporations, to give them powers, to place
them under the General Assembly, and to
say what powers they should have and
what functions they could perform.
I read this section to grant them addi-
tional powers, if it does anything, and I do
not think it is in keeping with the report
of the Local Government Committee, which
was adopted by this Convention. I oppose it.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Mr. Chair-
man, ladies and gentlemen, I have to op-
pose this amendment as a transtional pro-
vision. First of all, if it is only an attempt
to continue the powers of municipalities as
contained in Article 23A, sections 12 and
following of the present Annotated Code,
it is unnecessary because we are preserv-
ing all of the existing laws of the State of
Maryland which are not in conflict with
the new constitution, and consequently we
preserved all of the provisions of Article
23A with regard to the rights of municipal
corporations to amend their charter and to
repeal charters.
Section B of this amendment seems to
give the municipalities the right to adopt
a new charter. Under our new concept this
kind of adoption is a matter for the coun-
ties to determine. New municipal corpora-
tions will come into existence, and conse-
quently it is contrary to the philosophy of
the new constitution. I must oppose this
amendment as being either unnecessary or
pernicious.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gullett.
DELEGATE GULLETT: Mr. Chairman,
I rise to answer both Delegate Macdonald
and Delegate Hardwicke who have spoken
together in opposition to this amendment.
I find in no way additional powers for the
municipal corporations. I would be ex-
tremely disturbed for instance in the City of
College Park to find we could not raise our
tax rate because the tax rate is fixed in
the municipal charter. This would certainly
be a sorry state of affairs.
As to Delegate Hardwicke's mention of
new charters, it has for years been the
desire of the General Assembly to get mu-
nicipalities to update their charters, adopt
new charters. They even went to the ex-
tent of publishing new charters in Ar-
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ticle 23B of the Annotated Code. A great
many municipalities have these charters
dating back to the 1880's, so I think the
General Assembly would still hold they
should adopt these new charters. Certainly
this amendment would be a perfecting
amendment. I am for it.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Carson.
DELEGATE CARSON: Mr. Chairman,
ladies and gentlemen, the history of this
particular section, which now lies in section
3 of Article XI-E of your Constitution, is
interesting. Back in the days before 1954
most of the local legislation, or at least a
great part of it in this State, was with
regard to municipalities, and it was a great
evil. As a result, in 1948, the legislature
took steps trying by the express powers act
with regard to municipalities to end this,
but the Sobeloff Commission in its third re-
port recommended that a constitutional
amendment go even further and grant home
rule to municipalities, and that constitu-
tional amendment was then passed in 1954.
This section is at the heart of the SobelofF
Commission recommendations and at the
heart of home rule in municipalities. What
it did at that time is require the General
Assembly to act only by general law with
regard to municipalities. At the same time
it permitted municipalities to obtain powers
by changing their charter as long as the
General Assembly's general law did not
preclude that, and municipalities have used
that since that time, and since that time
there has been no local legislation with
regard to municipalities.
This is an important section, but we are
putting it in the statutory provisions and
not in the transitory provisions so that the
legislature can change it at any time. We
think it is important. We think that all of
the technicalities regarding how you change
the charter, which are in statute, both
from this and that, this gives right from
those. They are intertwined. I think it is
very important.
In addition, one other factor, a psycho-
logical one only, and that is that the mu-
nicipalities and Municipal League desire to
see this in the legislation and I think it de-
sirable to put it there.
I went to Baltimore with Mr. Marbury
about four weeks ago and spoke to the
Municipal League. As a result you may
have seen in the papers that they now sup-
port the constitution and intend to come
out for it wholeheartedly. They did it par-
tially upon the basis that they expect to
see this at least in the legislative schedule.
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