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the General Assembly then would enact
only one instrument of government, which
would then be required for any county not
adopting a charter?
DELEGATE MOSER: That I think is
the intention of the Committee. It is not an
option, it is a single charter, because it is
automatically effective July 1, 1972 for
those counties which have not adopted
their own instrument of government. There-
fore, the General Assembly shall provide
only one because the county can itself
write its own charter up to July 1, 1972.
Several charters cannot be automatically
effective.
DELEGATE HANSON: Did your Com-
mittee consider the possibility of having the
General Assembly provide optional forms
that would be available for counties not
wishing to draw up their own charter but
which would have to be adopted by a dic-
tate?
DELEGATE MOSER: In essence, we in-
tend that the legislature do something like
that, if it so wishes.
In the second sentence where we speak
in terms of procedure, the General Assem-
bly could go as far as you suggest. We do
not spell it out, we rely on the legislature.
DELEGATE HANSON: I like that an-
swer, Mr. Chairman. To make it perfectly
clear for the record then, this section would
permit the General Assembly to adopt
either a single instrument of government
for the counties not adopting their own
charter or it could also permit the General
Assembly to enact an optional forms act
and provide procedures for adoption of one
of those forms by counties.
DELEGATE MOSER: No.
(Laughter.)
I do not know where the misunderstand-
ing creeps in. I tried to be clear; some-
times I do lack clarity.
By the second sentence we intend that
the General Assembly shall provide a choice
of procedures.
At that point, this is an optional ar-
rangement. It means that the General As-
sembly could provide if it wanted a series
of charters to aid counties in adopting
them.
It could provide a charter combining the
executive and legislative branches and so
on. There could be a series of charters. The
decision is completely up to the General
Assembly.
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Once that has been done there is a sec-
ond step. That is simply this: The General
Assembly shall provide a sample charter. I
refer you again to the municipal corpora-
tion sample which is in the Code, some-
thing like that, which will automatically
become effective on July 1, 1972, if a county
has not adopted its own charter. These are
two different things.
Delegate Hanson.
DELEGATE HANSON: The second
question that I wanted to ask relates to
sections 7.02 and 7.10, considered together
in light of the discussion of these sections
on pages 11 through 13 of the committee
memorandum dealing with the problem of
special purpose districts and what is or may
not be a desirable form of local govern-
ment.
Is it the policy of sections 7.02 and 7.10
read together to constitutionally favor gen-
eral purpose units of local government,
such as the county and regional popularly
elected representative governments or the
state government in preference to special
purpose districts?
DELEGATE MOSER: Yes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any fur-
ther questions?
Delegate Hanson?
DELEGATE HANSON: Why did not
the Committee impose some greater caution
or limitation upon the capacity of the Gen-
eral Assembly to establish special purpose
authorities, such as suggesting that they
might not be established if a general pur-
pose unit of government were capable of
performing the function.
DELEGATE MOSER: We would hope
this is what the General Assembly would
do.
Let me point out one of the problems in
the suggestion that you made. Some dele-
gate proposals similar to it would have re-
stricted the General Assembly in this re-
gard. We feel, on the contrary, that the
General Assembly has to be free to exer-
cise its own judgment. We want to
strengthen the General Assembly. We are
hopeful it will follow your admonition, but
I do not think we can tie its hands in any
respect.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hanson,
do you have further question?
DELEGATE HANSON: Yes.
Do sections 7.05 and 7.06 mean that once
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