ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 17

One of the reasons why some agencies encounter difficulties is that
they give little, or no thought, to the proper disposal of their non-current
records until an emergency arises. All too often we have received frantic
telephone calls from agencies preparing to move to new quarters within a
week. They wish to dispose of records because they have less space in
their new quarters or because they want to save the trouble of moving
records they no longer need. Perhaps we should take a more active part
in guiding and advising state agencies in their record problems, but we
cannot assume this additional function with our present staff. We have,
therefore, included in our budget request for fiscal year 1952 a new posi-
tion, "Public Record Examiner." This request will give the Governor and
the General Assembly an opportunity to study the problem and to decide
whether its solution should be assigned to the Hail of Records.

A list of the agencies whose records were offered to the Hall of
Records Commission under the terms of the disposal law and a report of
the action taken follows:

BALTIMORE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT

Elsewhere in this report we describe a project for photocopying certain
records of this Department. An unexpected difficulty arose over the ques-
tion of whether the originals could be destroyed after they had been photo-
copied. We had supported the passage of Chapter 518 of the Acts of 1949
for the express purpose of permitting destruction in such cases. However,
the Attorney General, who had also been consulted by the Police Com-
missioner, ruled that these records constituted a special case because of the
provisions of Section 553 of the Charter and Public Local Laws of Balti-
more City, Flack, 1949, which require the Police Commissioner to keep
certain records and to have such records and "all other documents in the
possession of said Commissioner" always open to inspection by the General
Assembly and by the Mayor and City Treasurer. The Attorney General
considered that photocopies could be used to fulfill the latter requirement,
but he ruled that the original records could not be destroyed because Section
127A of Chapter 755 prohibits the destruction of "public records required
by statute to be maintained permanently." This decision left the Police
Commissioner no recourse but to secure the passage of a special act per-
mitting the records to be destroyed. Such authority is given by Chapter
454 of the Acts of 1951.