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approval. Four conditions were attached to the delegated contracting authority: (1)
that the contract fall within an "expenditure classification" established by the board;
(2) that the aggregate annual dollar value of the contract (and any change orders) be
less than a "monetary threshold" established by the board; (3) that these monetary
thresholds "be sufficiently high to free the board from direct review of relatively in-
significant items while not impairing the strong public policy in favor of direct board
review"; and (4) that an "accountability or reporting system approved by the board
be established" to inform the board with respect to actions taken by the agencies.⁶³

In large measure, this was the approach ultimately taken in the procurement
code, but the 1979 bills had one piece of "excess baggage" not to the governor's liking.
They each provided that the board's regulations were subject to approval by the Joint
Legislative Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review. Decry-
ing such legislative veto over executive agency rules, the governor vetoed both bills,
presuming that the vetoes would be overriden and that such action would pave the
way for a test case on "the constitutional authority of the General Assembly to con-
dition the exercise of an administrative agency's rule making authority upon the ap-
proval of a legislative committee."⁶⁴ As expected, the legislature overrode both vetoes
early in its 1980 session, and the two acts took effect as chapters 1 and 2, Acts of
1980.⁶⁵

Following enactment of the new procurement article, the governor appointed a
Governor's Task Force on State Procurement Regulations to develop the required reg-
ulations for both the board and the four procurement agencies (the departments of
General Services, Budget and Fiscal Planning, Transportation, and the University of
Maryland). In the course of its work the task force examined in detail the actual
agendas of the board during the preceding two and a half years, from which it was
able to compile a quantitative analysis of the board's activities.

That analysis is revealing. It documents statistically the alarms raised nearly
thirty years earlier by the Sobeloff-Stockbridge Commission. On the average the board
had before it over 3,200 items a year, which, considering that it meets twice monthly,
translates into about 125 items per meeting. About 90 percent of those 3,200 plus items
involved less than $25,000, and indeed it was not uncommon for the board, at a single
meeting, to have before it several massive construction projects involving personal
presentations and considerable discussion along with a bundle of requests to approve
change orders amounting to less than $5,000, each of which also had to be reviewed.⁶⁶

To appreciate the effect the new law and the regulations promulgated under it
may have, it is necessary to understand how the board has actually been operating.