98

LAWS OF MARYLAND

Ch. 8

The fundamental changes of both 1959 and 1973 were made by
amendment to the then existing law. Those amendments included
numerous changes to coordinate some of the more detailed
provisions of the law. However, in both of those revisions of
the law, some provisions were retained -- with but minor changes
-- which no longer served a practical purpose.

An effort has been made in this revision to recognize the
changes that have been made regarding the assessment mechanism in
the State and to delete or modify provisions that no longer had a
practical application. In particular, Art. 81 contained several
provisions that were premised on the pre-1973 structure. Under
that structure, supervisors were local employees over whom the
Department needed to exercise certain controls to maintain a
uniform and coordinated assessment process for the State. Since,
today, the assessment process is entirely a State function and
all supervisors, together with all other assessment personnel,
are employees of the Department, those outdated provisions have
been deleted or modified to better reflect the current state of
the law. See, e.g., the revisions of former Art. 81, §§ 232(4),
233(f), and 233(g), which now appear as §§ 2-202(3), 2-106, and
2-216(a) of this subtitle, respectively.

II. Transferred Provisions.

Former Art. 81, § 37, that required the former. Archivist,
now the Commissioner, to prepare and mail to the supervisors a
list of any certificates that have become ready for patent, is
transferred to § 13-206 of the Real Property Article.

Former Art. 81, §§ 246B, 246C, and 246D were enacted under
Ch. 784, Acts of 1973. These sections provided for the transfer
from county employment to State employment of supervisors,
assessors, and clerical assessment personnel, respectively.

Among other provisions, the sections set forth: (1) the
right of those employees to elect to retain employment benefits,
including the salaries, of their respective local
government; (2) the right of the employees who elected to
remain in the local systems to receive salary increases; and
(3) the duty of this State to reimburse the local governments
for these expenses.

The 3 sections contained numerous detailed provisions
concerning the transfer of the employees. Several of these
provisions clearly are obsolete while most others still have a
legal application, albeit, regarding a very limited number of
persons. There are still other provisions that might appear
obsolete, but for which prudence would dictate against repeal.

On analysis of these 3 sections, the Commission to Revise
the Annotated Code decided that, given their limited and
temporary application, they should not be revised in this article
and, thus, retained in the Annotated Code. The Commission also