HARRY HUGHES, Governor

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decided that it would be ill-advised to repeal any part of the
sections -- lest, for loss of context, the extant provisions
become too difficult to understand. The Commission, therefore,
decided to transfer the 3 sections, in their entirety, to the

Session Laws. See Ch. ___, Acts of 1985. This decision

cautiously preserves the extant rights and duties under those
sections while extracting from the Code transitory provisions,
which have limited practical application.

Article 41, § 318 was enacted by Ch. 757, Acts of 1959.
That chapter abolished the Tax Commission and created in its
stead the Department and the Maryland Tax Court.

Except for the last sentence, former Art. 41, § 318(2)
described the powers and duties of the Department in terms of
those nonquasi-judicial powers and duties previously assigned to
the Tax Commission, together with those powers and duties
subsequently conferred on the Department by law.

The Commission to Revise the Annotated Code doubts that any
of the provisions of former Art. 41, § 318(2) -- save the last
sentence — added anything to the powers and duties that are
stated expressly in this title. However, rather than repeal
these provisions, the Commission elected to transfer them to the
Session Laws. This serves to remove what appear to be
unnecessary provisions from this title, while exercising the
caution that, to the extent the provisions might add to the
Department's express powers and duties, that authority is
preserved. See Ch. ___, Acts of 1985.

While the last sentence of former Art. 41, § 318(2) is
included in this transfer, the substance of that sentence is also
repeated as a codified provision under § 2-206 of this subtitle.

III. Repealed sections.

Former Art. 81, § 232A prohibited, subject to criminal
penalty, the unauthorized sale or other transfer for profit of
tax maps and the reproduction of any of the specified maps for
unauthorized sale and is deleted. In 1968, the Court of Appeals,
in State's Attorney v. Sekuler, 249 Md. 499 (1968), found that
section to be in conflict with the federal Copyright Law and,
therefore, in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United
States Constitution. On that basis, the Court found Art. 81, §
232A to be invalid. Although the section subsequently was
amended by Ch. 331, Acts of 1977 to insert an exception at the
beginning of the section, that amendment did nothing to correct
the fundamental defect found by the Court and, hence, can only be
viewed as a meaningless amendment to an invalid section.

Since 1968, the Department is aware of no attempt to
enforce former Art. 81, § 232A, and it now submits the
referenced maps to the procedures necessary to avail itself of
the protection of the Copyright Law.