REPORT OF THE COMPTROLLER OF THE TREASURY xiii

BUDGET SYSTEM.

Permit me again to refer to my report for the fiscal year 1914,
as made to his Excellency Phillips L. Goldsborough.

''In my judgment, the time has iiow arrived in the financial
affairs of this State where a different mode or system ought to
be inaugurated in dealing with appropriations. The present
method is antiquated and unbusinesslike and woefully lacking
in any system whatever, and to this cause, more than any other,
do I attribute our present embarrasement. Our appropriation
bills and omnibus bills are generally passed about the last days
of the session, when the Finance Committees are overburdened
with work, and they have not sufficient time properly to estimate
the total amount of all the appropriations, for do not believe
that the Legislature, with their eyes fully opened to the subject,
would deliberately make appropriations for the two fiscal years
intervening from the meeting of one Legislature to another so
largely in excess of the revenues of the State applicable to the
payment of such appropriations.

"We have now upon the statute books Acts of Assembly car-
rying appropriations under which they are now paid that were
enacted more than a century ago, and in recent years this custom
of securing appropriations of this character by inserting after the
amount of the appropriations the word ''annually" has grown
apace. These appropriations remain as such until repealed,
which is seldom the case,and therefore are not passed upon by the
the succeeding Legislature. At each session of the General Assem-
bly new Acts of a simlar character are passed, thereby increasing
the burden upon the Treasury. In the limited time of the ses-
sion, and especially owing to the physical as well as mental
strain to which the members of the Finance and Ways and
Means Committees are subjected, it is impossible for them to
give such matters the attention they so well deserve and should
receive.

"I am equally of the opinion that all special Acts carrying ap-

, propriations should be absolutely repealed, their future enactment

prohibited, and that all future appropriations by the State

should be covered in two bills, one for each of the fiscal years;

and, further, that a Constitutional Amendment should be passed