8 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [June 13

agreement that only necessary legislation, previously announced and
publicized, should have the benefit of your thought, your discussions and
your actions on this occasion.

Please remember that the 90-day, Regular Session of 1959 is little
more than half a year away.

Most of us have been long enough together in this Government to
have developed a mutuality of frankness.

It is in frankness, then, that I recognize the temptation inherent in
a gathering such as this, in a time such as this, for the making of a little
political hay.

I urge that you put the temptation behind you and turn promptly
to the serious task of the day.

From the experience of many years, I can assure you now that the
many Marylanders who will appreciate the quick, orderly and effective
dispatch of legislative business will far outnumber the few who might
note with favor the use in these chambers of words of vindictiveness or
phrases of self-aggrandizement.

You are here primarily to authorize the Department of Employment
Security to enter into agreement with the Federal Government for ex-
tending by 50 per cent the period over which unemployment compensation
is to be paid to insured beneficiaries.

I am confident that the need for and the principle involved in this
law are widely accepted. I am sure your committees can explain the
details of its proposed provisions. I am sure there will be little or no
cause herein for dispute or discord.

I might note in passing that the enactment and performance of this
temporary legislation could and should serve a two-fold purpose—first,
to cope with the current conditions of unemployment; second, to provide
the opportunity and the reason for a closer and more searching look at
our Unemployment Compensation Law in its normal working, and to com-
pare it with results under the temporary provisions now proposed.

It well might arouse us to the realization that the present 26 week
limit on compensation payments is unrealistic, not only in occasional
times of economic adjustment, but—for some recipients—in years of a
normal economy or even in those of prosperity.

I strongly urge that those of you who will be returning to the Regular
Session in January keep this matter and the working of the temporary law
under close scrutiny in the interim, with a view to introducing and sup-
porting such necessary corrective legislation as may be indicated by the
experience.

From the time that the calling of this Session became a likelihood,
Baltimore City authorities and members of the Greater Baltimore Com-
mittee have discussed publicly the probability that legislation would be
introduced to authorize the Municipality to submit to the City's voters
a loan proposal to finance the City's tshare of the Charles Center renewal
project for downtown Baltimore.

Similar authority is to be sought in connection with the proposed
Civic Center, which is even older, in public discussion.