MARVIN MANDEL, Governor

2789

have been significant reversions of funds appropriated
for the various scholarship programs. The largest
reversions have been from the General and Senatorial
programs, amounting in Fiscal Year 1975 to over $400,000
of the $490,000 total reversion.

The major cause of these funds remaining unused has
been the withdrawal of students receiving awards during
the school year, and the delay in the colleges notifying
the Board of these withdrawals. Most of the withdrawals
occur in the fall, between September and November.

Two other bills were passed this year concerning the
scholarship programs that I have signed into law. Senate
Bill 857 requires the colleges to notify the State
Scholarship Board within 30 days of a withdrawal, and the
Board must then notify the appointing authority within 10
days. This will, I am advised, be of great help in
allowing the Board to reaward these funds in time for the
spring semester. Senate Bill 975 allows awards under the
General State Scholarship Program to be made by
legislative district, rather than by political
subdivision, which would also assist in the reawarding of
unused scholarship funds, particularly in Baltimore City,
where most of the unmet need appears to be.

This year, the State Scholarship Board made a
concerted effort to avoid reversions by reawarding, in
the spring, funds made available by withdrawals in the
fall. As a result, the reversion for Fiscal Year 1976 is
not expected to exceed $50,000. I am advised further
that if Senate Bills 857 and 975 had been in effect, the
unused funds could have been reawarded so that all
eligible applicants would have received awards for at
least part of the school year, and the reversion, if any,
would be de minimis.

It would therefore appear that most of the problem
that engendered Senate Bill 891, save perhaps some
administrative inconvenience in making awards in the
spring, has or will be dissipated by the enactment of
Senate Bills 857 and 975 and the commendably efficient
operation of the Board. Outweighing whatever
inconvenience may be involved in reawarding scholarships
in the spring is the poor precedent of authorizing a
State agency to accumulate annual appropriations where
some special need for such accumulation does not exist.
Such an exemption from standard budget and fiscal
procedures necessarily involves some loss of budgetary
control, and ought to be granted only where there is a
clear and compelling need for it.

I am aware that provisions similar to those in
Senate Bill 831 were included in the bills sponsored by
the Administration to revise generally the State