3080                                                VETOES

Reitz, 50 Md. 574 (1879)) to the effect that sections of
laws which are discordant and dissimilar to each other
violate the prohibition against laws containing more than
one subject. Beshore v. Town of Bel Air, 237 Md. 398,
412 (1965) .

There are only two arguable connections which could
be made between the two seemingly unrelated portions of
Senate Bill 788. They both do relate to Calvert County
and it is true that one portion relates to the County
Treasurer and the other relates to the expenditure of
public funds. We do not believe that the second
"connection" is a sufficient one and we are further of
the opinion that the fact that both portions of the bill
pertain to the same county will not support a conclusion
that the bill relates to a single subject. A conclusion
that applicability to a single county would by itself be
a sufficient nexus would virtually immunize any public
local law from the single subject requirements, and if
that had been the intent then the applicable provision of
the Constitution would have so provided and would not
purport to apply to "[e]very law". See Curtis v.
Mactier, 115 Md. 386, 394 (1911) , where the Court of
Appeals invalidated a law pertaining to the incorporation
of the village of Chevy Chase (in Montgomery County) and
authorizing the imposition of a tax by the County
Commissioners of Montgomery County and the payment of its
proceeds to the Chevy Chase Improvement Association as
"manifestly [involving] ... two wholly distinct
subjects".

Having concluded that Senate Bill 788 is in
violation of the single subject requirement, it is
necessary to determine if any portion of the bill can be
saved. The Court of Appeals has noted that the
constitutional provision in question was enacted to
prevent the practice of engrafting upon proper
legislation matters which members of the General Assembly
were induced to sanction, and that its purpose was not to
endanger the main subject of the legislation. Madison
National Bank v. Newrath, 261 Md. 321 (1971). If foreign
and irrelevant, or discordant, matter is found in a
statute, it will be rejected if other sections of the law
can stand without it. But if the statute is composed of
a number of discordant and dissimilar subjects, so that
no one could be clearly recognized as the controlling or
principal one, the whole law would be void. The Mayor
and City Council of Baltimore v. Reitz, 50 Md. 574, 579
(1879) .

We see no basis upon which to conclude that one or
the other of the two separate subjects covered by Senate
Bill 788 is the controlling or principal or dominant
subject, and it is our view that the entire bill is
unconstitutional.