organization, staffing facilities, all is com-
patible with this proposal, but moreover,
here you could have a complete deadlock.
The House and Senate might fail to agree
on what the ratio should be and then I do
not know whether you would have a Gen-
eral Assembly or not.
In all probability they would agree to the
maximum and any adjustment thereafter
would have to be in favor of the Senate at
the expense of the House.
Certainly no agreement could be reached
on that basis. It seems to me that this
avoids a basic constitutional decision, the
adoption of this would be a shirking of our
constitutional duty to provide firm consti-
tutional rulings. It puts something in the
legislature that should not be there. I am
opposed to it.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gilchrist,
you have two minutes to allocate.
DELEGATE GILCHRIST: I allocate
two minutes to Delegate Marvin Smith.
DELEGATE M. SMITH: The arguments
presented against this and other plans have
seemed to be based on the size of the Gen-
eral Assembly and as I have listened to
them, they have been based primarily on
the premise that the present General As-
sembly is unwieldly because of the House
being based on two committees.
What kept going through my mind was
why there could not be three or four or
five. I notice the Eagleton Report, which
has just now been distributed to us, on
page 251 suggests the possibility of five
committees in the House of Delegates.
I take cognizance of what has been said
by Delegates Hanson and James with ref-
erence to shirking of responsibility and I
will point out to you that the majority re-
port provides that the General Assembly
shall prescribe within certain limits "just
as this says," shall prescribe within cer-
tain limits."
Mr. Chairman, we do not contemplate
that there would be necessarily one dele-
gate per county. We realize that the popu-
lation is going to change, but I say to you,
sir, that the more delegates there are, the
shorter distance some of our people are
going to have to travel.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any other
delegates desiring to speak in favor of the
amendment?
Delegate Weidemeyer?
DELEGATE WEIDEMEYER: Mr.
President, Members of this Convention, in |
the newspapers this morning we read that
New York State has spent $10 million and
six months' time only to have a constitu-
tion draft fail when it went before the
voters.
That draft failed for one of two reasons:
it either failed to meet the needs of the
people, or it did not meet the whimsies of
the people.
When I hear delegates talk about living
up to our responsibility, I think our re-
sponsibility here today is to draft a con-
stitution under which the people of the
State of Maryland can live for many years
to come and with which they will be happy
when we submit it. However, if we go to
any drastic measures of dropping the House
of Delegates down to eight or the ridiculous
number of 105, then you are curtailing
representation all over the state.
You are making the people of the State
of Maryland feel they are losing their
representatives. I say, to take the commit-
tee's report of 105 in the House of Dele-
gates and 35 in the Senate is just about
as ridiculous as I could imagine. We could
shock the people of the State of Maryland
no more than to give them one of those
two recommendations.
I say if you want to keep the people
of Maryland happy and make them feel
that they have a part in this State and
that they have a chance to vote for repre-
sentatives, then you better give them rep-
resentatives in their area. The only way
you are going to be able to distribute repre-
sentation is by a House of a similar size
of 142.
I have heard some talk about it being
unwieldy. I lived with the House for four
years from 1962 to 1966.
I say that I did not get everything 1
wanted, but those were four happy years
and I felt I did a good job and that the
others were working hard. Probably some
of the workload could have been distributed
a little bit better, but that is something
for the future.
I think the faults of the past will lead
to improvements in the future in the legis-
lature.
I say when you tamper with reducing the
size of the House you are shocking the
people of the State of Maryland and that
one thing alone may be a big factor in
defeating the constitution.
I say that I worked hard, I was one of
those who did not favor the calling of a |
