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The Overburdened Board: 1960-1983 107
the Board of Public Works which requests should be allowed and which should be
denied.28 Final authority for allocating state funds, derived from periodic bond issues,
and for project approval was vested in the Board of Public Works.
The community college construction program began with a modest $5 million bond
issue in 1961. By 1979 over $108 million had been authorized, from which community
colleges were constructed and expanded throughout the state.29 The vocational school
program began in 1965 and was of shorter duration. Altogether $30 million was ex-
pended to assist in the construction and equipping of some forty schools.30
These programs, though important to the subdivisions and to the development of
adequate vocational and community college facilities, were essentially adjunctive for
the board. They never produced the controversy or the headaches engendered by the
general school construction program, at least not for the Board of Public Works.
The school construction programs described above were essentially intergovern-
mental—grants of one kind or another to assist the subdivisions in discharging func-
tions that were ultimately the responsibility of the state but which had been delegated
by the legislature to the subdivisions. Hospitals stood on a different footing. Although
there were a number of public hospitals in the state, most were either specialized
facilities—psychiatric hospitals or those for the retarded—or, in the case of University
Hospital, an adjunct to the public medical college. With few exceptions the provision
of general hospital services was in private hands.
It was not uncommon for the state from time to time to lend or give construction
money to private institutions. Several private colleges had been aided in this manner
over the years, as had at least one private hospital. But this was usually done through
individual bond bills directing the proceeds to be paid over directly to the institution
and ordinarily did not involve the Board of Public Works except in terms of selling
the bonds.31 In 1964, however, perceiving a need to assist in the development of ad-
ditional general hospital capacity, the General Assembly departed from the individual
grant or loan approach and authorized a systematic program of lending money to
private hospitals to assist in financing new construction projects.32 That program di-
rectly involved the board.
The 1964 act authorized a $50 million bond issue to be used to make below-
market—rate construction and renovation loans to voluntary nonprofit hospitals. Gen-
eral administration of the loan program was vested in a seven-member Maryland
Hospital Commission, which was to receive applications and make recommendations
with respect to them to the board. Final approval authority was vested in the board.
For its part the commission was responsible for judging the applications in accordance
with eight statutory criteria, including (1) need in the community for the project, (2)
need of the hospital for the loan, and (3) ability of the hospital to repay the loan.
A number of problems with the hospital funding program arose almost immedi-
ately, and indeed they were foreseeable before the legislation was enacted. The most
28. In 1959 the State Board for Community Colleges took over the role of the State Board of Education with
respect to the community college construction program.
29. See Acts of 1961, ch. 373; 1964, ch. 27; 1965, ch. 709; 1967, ch. 656; 1968, ch. 588; 1969, chs. 440, 500;
1970, ch. 715; 1971, ch. 350; 1972, ch. 344; 1974, ch. 669; 1975, ch. 293; 1979, ch. 441. See also Annual
Reports of the Maryland Comptroller, 1961-79 (Annapolis; statement A-9).
30. See Acts of 1965, ch. 740; 1967, ch. 654; 1969, ch. 607; Annual Reports of the Maryland Comptroller,
1961-79 (Annapolis, 1961-79), statement A-9.
31. See, for example, Acts of 1951, ch. 414, providing a $1 million construction grant to Johns Hopkins
University. See also Johns Hopkins Univ. v. Williams, 199 Md. 382 (1952), sustaining the validity of such
grants; also Acts of 1962, ch. 130, providing a construction grant of $2 million to Provident Hospital in
Baltimore. That act did require the disbursements to be approved by the Board of Public Works.
32. Acts of 1964, ch. 138.
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