HARRY HUGHES, Governor

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Claims in Atkins v. United States, 556 F. 2d 1028 (1977). The
premises of the Atkins opinion have recently been sweepingly
rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States in Immigration
& Naturalization Service v. Chadha, supra, at 103 S.Ct. at 2787,
n. 22 expressly rejecting the Atkins opinion by stressing the
bicameralism and presentation requirements of the federal
Constitution and concluding that there is no validity for the
proposition that subjecting executive actions to legislative veto
is equivalent to permitting one house of Congress to defeat
proposed legislation. Thus one of the principal legal arguments
underlying the 1978 Opinion has been eliminated.

Finally, the discussion of the validity under Maryland law
of the legislative veto provision contained in the 1978 Opinion
made no reference to any pertinent history of state
constitutional provisions shedding light on the issue. It seems
apparent to me that the provisions of Article II, Section 24 of
the State Constitution relating to reorganization plans,
dramatically illustrates that the prior construction of the
Constitution of this State has proceeded on the premise that when
it was desired to provide a so-called legislative veto it was
necessary to provide for such legislative veto not by statute but
by constitutional amendment.

The provisions of Article III, Section 5 of the Constitution
relating to legislative reapportionment similarly deny to the
General Assembly the power to make piecemeal modifications of the
reapportionment plan authorized to be submitted to the Governor,
i.e., the General Assembly's authority is limited by the
Constitution to a power to supplant the gubernatorial plan by a
plan of its own by law.

Considerations that have led the United States Supreme Court
and the Courts and Attorneys General of other states to
invalidate provisions for legislative or committee veto similar
to those contained in the present bill are fully applicable to
our constitutional scheme. Article III, Section 1 of our
Constitution expressly provides "the Legislature shall consist of
two distinct branches; a Senate and a House of Delegates." The
provisions of Article VIII of the Declaration of Rights expressly
declare "that the legislative, executive and judicial powers of
government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each
other; and no person exercising the functions of one of said
departments shall assume or discharge the duties of any other.."
This provision has been construed to invalidate a statute which
would have granted to the Governor the power to add to the
classified service such offices and places of employment not
included therein as he might think advisable upon the basis that
this constituted an attempt to transfer to the Governor a power
of repeal vested only in the General Assembly. Ahlgren v.
Cromwell, 179 Md. 243 (1941). Those provisions in House Bill
1255 that would allow the General Assembly discretionary power on
policy or legal grounds to set aside executive acts without
legislation are similarly incompatible with the Constitution.