Should later developments in this Con-
vention disprove our confidence, the Com-
mittee will probably move to strike this
exception.
As was mentioned previously, liquor laws
are currently exempt from referendum.
The research into the purpose of this con-
stitutional amendment indicates that it was
stimulated by the bitter struggles over
prohibition. You might be interested to
know that in the same election in which
the referendum article was added to our
Constitution, there was indeed a prohibition
party candidate for governor in Mary-
land and he received 2,335 votes.
The Committee has been unable to dis-
tinguish between the alcoholic beverage in-
dustry and other industries within this
state for the purposes of exclusion from
the provision of referendum.
One other change that the Committee
recommends effects that part of the present
Constitution, which provides that any law
or part of a law is subject to referendum.
The Committee recommendation strikes
"part of the law" so that only total laws
or total acts would be subject to refer-
endum.
Research indicates that in some states
where the same provision exists that part
of a law may be petitioned to referendum,
the courts have greatly limited the use of
this provision by ruling that when an es-
sential part of a law is rejected, the law
falls. This has contributed to confusion
about what the effect of a referendum on
the part of the law might be.
Maryland legislators have pointed out to
us this same danger and the Committee
agrees that the continued inclusion of this
provision might permit capricious use and
lead to confusion of the voter.
One of the most difficult problems con-
fronting the Committee was our struggle
with the non-suspendable type of law that
is designated in the present Constitution as
emergency legislation.
Article 16 contains the only reference to
emergency legislation, in the following ter-
minology.
It says that every act that is considered
an emergency law shall contain a section
declaring such law an emergency law, and
necessary for the immediate preservation
of the public health or safety, and I would
like to underline, public health, or the
preservation of the public health or safety.
It also requires that such laws be passed |
by three-fifths of all the members elected
to each of the two houses of the General
Assembly.
The Committee agrees that the legis-
lature should certainly have the power to
identify those laws which by their nature
should not be subject to suspension. Our
only concern was with the word "emer-
gency," since this has a very limited con-
notation.
Although the courts have been reluctant
to inquire into the nature of the emer-
gency in the past, the Committee would
prefer to obviate the possibility of their
doing so in the future by the use of a term
somewhat less restrictive than emergency.
I do not know whether you are all aware
of the fact that the law setting up the Con-
stitutional Convention was indeed passed
as an emergency law. We leave the inter-
pretation of the word "emergency" to you.
Delegate Proposal No. 2 solves the prob-
lem of emergency legislation by not giving
such legislation by name.
The danger inherent in this approach,
we think, is that any legislation inadvert-
ently passed by a three-fifths majority may
fall into a non-suspendable category for a
variety of reasons that are completely un-
related to the essential nature of the bill.
The Committee thinks it important that
the non-suspendable aspects of this type
of legislation should be apparent early in
the legislative process. For this reason, the
Committee rejected the approach of Dele-
gate Proposal 2. To avoid what the Com-
mittee thinks is a misleading or limiting
term in the present Constitution, we sug-
gest the use of the term "special legisla-
tion," rather than legislation, but we rec-
ommend that such legislation be so identi-
fied upon introduction.
The number of signatures for a sufficient
petition, the time permitted in which to
obtain signatures, and the geographic rep-
resentation reflected by the signatures were
considered interdependent parts of a single
recommendation.
In arriving at its decisions on this mat-
ter, the Committee was cognizant of the
changing patterns of Maryland's popula-
tion, a greater urbanization and concentra-
tion of population, with the same trends
continuing for the foreseeable future.
It concluded that five per cent of the
number of votes cast in the previous guber-
natorial election was a reasonable require-
ment. |
