It is interesting to note, I think, that 15
other states allow the General Assembly to
call itself into special session.
Turning now to the last section of the
Committee Report, on compensation of leg-
islators, the language states: "The members
of the General Assembly shall receive such
salary and allowances as may be prescribed
by law. Increases in salary shall not apply
to the General Assembly which enacted
them. No senator or delegate shall be paid
daily living expenses during regular ses-
sion of the General Assembly."
The effect of this proposed new consti-
tutional section is to remove from the
Maryland Constitution the statement of the
explicit dollars that members of the legis-
lature are to be paid. As you know, the
present Constitution calls for the payment
of $2,400 per year. If you examine earlier
versions of the Constitution, you will find
that sometimes the figure was set at $5.00
per day, and various formulas were used.
It has long since been recognized, however,
that it is unrealistic and poor Constitu-
tional practice to place the salary in a Con-
stitution, because the dollar value, the pur-
chasing power of the dollar in 1967 is far
different from what it was in 1867. Since
it is extremely difficult to amend the Con-
stitution to take care of inflation and rises
and falls in the market, and also to take
care of the increase in duties and the corre-
spondingly greater salary which should be
paid, the idea and the practice of putting
the dollar amount in the Constitution has
been set aside.
I think a good example of this practice
and its lack of wisdom was the governor's
salary, which was set at $4,500 under the
Constitution of 1867, and persisted until
1950.
The result of putting the dollar figure in
the constitution has led to a variety of
practices to compensate office holders in
means other than salary. Consequently, we
have today in the General Assembly the
practice of paying per diem living expenses,
which amount to $25.00 a day or $1,750 a
year. If you add this $1,750 a year, which
I believe is adopted by rule of the House
and Senate, to the dollar figure contained
in the Constitution as classified salary, you
will see that the actual compensation to
the members of the General Assembly is
not the $2,400 listed explicitly in the Con-
stitution, but $4,150.
It was the feeling of the Committee on
the Legislative Branch that the salaries
should be realistic ones, and should not |
allow for providing a daily expense figure.
Consequently we specifically prohibited the
payment of daily expenses during the regu-
lar session of the General Assembly.
We have recommended that the salary of
the members of the General Assembly be
set at $8,000 per year. This figure is not
contained in the constitution. The Com-
mittee has voted to provide that the $8,000
annual salary be provided in the schedule of
transitory legislation, which was author-
ized under section 17 of the Enabling Act
calling this Convention. Under the par-
ticular provisions of that section, the Con-
stitutional Convention is authorized to pre-
pare legislation in the form of public gen-
eral laws, which it believes should take
effect immediately and which should take
care of pressing difficulties and problems.
Now, if the new constitution is adopted,
it will, of course, have the effect of doing
away completely with the old Constitution.
But in doing away with the old Constitu-
tion, the $2,400 salary explicitly provided
therein would be eliminated, go that upon
the adoption of the new constitution there
would be no salary available for members
of the General Assembly because its one
source of authorization would have fallen
as a result of the substitution of the new
Constitution.
We, therefore, have recommended the
figure of $8,000 per year, which we hasten
to point out is not three and a half times
what the General Assembly is presently re-
ceiving, but is less than twice what it is
presently receiving.
We have arrived at the figure of $8,000,
and 1 and the members of the Committee
believe, conservatively, based upon very de-
tailed sifting of the duties of the members
of the General Assembly. We believe that
the off-session Committee work, as well as
the 70 day work which is presently per-
formed by the General Assembly takes up
so much time of some of the delegates that
although we may be reluctant to classify
the General Assembly of Maryland as a
full-time legislature, it nevertheless ap-
proaches full time service to the people of
Maryland in the amount of time that is
devoted to the business of this State and
to the business of the General Assembly.
Now, it may well be true that in past
times it had been difficult to have the voters
increase the Constitutionally authorized
salary, but the Committee believes that
part of the reason lies in the fact that the
general public has not been aware of the
vast amount of time and sacrifice that goes |
