form committees, and refer bills to the
various committees.
The Committee on the Legislative Branch
was mindful of the fact that if you did not
have an organization session distinguished
from a regular session, the effect of meet-
ing in an organization session, which
ideally would probably take place sometime
in December, might trigger the running of
the 90 days, and so consequently the Com-
mittee felt that it would specifically pro-
vide for a special organization session to
take care of the details of getting the legis-
lature cranked up and geared to go, with-
out beginning to commence the regular ses-
sion and the running of the regular initial
period, which presumably would be 90 days.
There are other states, specifically, Flor-
ida and Alabama, which also use the organ-
ization session technique. I might also point
out that the session, of course, is an an-
nual session. We have moved over the past
10 to 15 years from biennial sessions to
annual sessions. At one time we had a 90
day session one year, followed by a 30 day
session the following year. The 30 day ses-
sion presumably was to take care of budget
matters, emergency legislation, and matters
pertaining to the general welfare. This pre-
sented such great problems, however, that
the General Assembly ultimately moved to
a regular 70 day annual session.
Twenty-one states meet annually, and
there is a great movement in the direction
of annual meetings.
I might also say that 43 states begin
their regular sessions in January, as has
been suggested in section 3.12.
Now, it may be quite true that the rea-
son for commencement of sessions in Janu-
ary had something to do with the harvest-
ing of crops and the availability of the
farmers when the State was primarily a
rural State. However, January is an ideal
time from many points of view. The fiscal
year is built around this particular time,
and consequently the Committee felt that
we should continue to provide for the begin-
ning of the regular session on the third
Wednesday of January. Please note, how-
ever, that there is an escape clause here
which specifically provides, "unless other-
wise prescribed by law," so that the Gen-
eral Assembly may designate another time
other than that stated in the Constitution
if it so desires.
I might point out with respect to the so-
called self-determination of length of ses-
sion that the 1864 Constitution of Maryland |
did not set a limitation upon the length of
time which the General Assembly would
use in meeting. However, the 1867 as well
as the 1851 Constitution did place a limita-
tion.
With respect to special sessions, I think
it is significant to say and to note that
Maryland, together with California and
Alabama, has had over the period of the
last decade more special sessions of the
General Assembly than any of the other 47
States of the Union, so that we have not
hesitated to use the special session.
Those who argue for allowing the legis-
lature to set its own meeting time, of
course, point to the frequency of the use
of special sessions as an argument which
would buttress their point of view.
We also made a significant change in
how the special session is convened. We now
provide that not only may the governor call
a special session, but also the presiding
officers of both the House and the Senate
acting concurrently, and finally, the legis-
lature itself by a three-fifths written re-
quest, may require that it be convened by
the governor into special session. Thus,
there are three avenues for calling special
sessions.
We used the three-fifths rather than the
majority principle because we felt that
three-fifths would guarantee that if there
were a special session, at least there would
be some reasonable likelihood that the mat-
ter which brought the House and Senate
together would be acted upon in an approp-
riate, affirmative fashion. The Committee
felt there was a risk with the majority
vote for self-convening, that there might
not be enough votes when they finally ar-
rived to accomplish whatever good was in-
tended by the call of the special session.
With respect to putting the power into
the hands of the President of the Senate
and the Speaker of the House to convene
the General Assembly concurrently, we felt
that these men were responsible enough
not to call such a session on whim or fancy
or some light reason, but would only do so
provided they felt that there was an oppor-
tunity to accomplish something positive
and there was some genuine need which
had to be acted upon immediately.
Because of the difficulty in gearing up
and getting staffs together, we believed
that no special session of the General As-
sembly would be called except for good
reason. |
