Current Problems o f Enforcement	47

the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay areas. Such a
commission was provided for by JR 17 of the 1945 session
of the Maryland General Assembly, the joint resolution
having been passed in the expectation that the Governor
of Virginia would appoint a similar commission to repre
sent his state. This has not been done, and the Maryland
commission has had no one with whom to meet. Infor
mally, however, the members of the Maryland commission
have expressed general approval of the proposal for a per
manent joint commission.

	The suggested amendments to the Compact of 1785 were
	incorporated into ten articles, to be known as Articles 14
	to 23 of the Compact. They would have set up a joint com
	mission of six members, three from each state, to be known
	as the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. Ordinarily,
	the members would have come from the Virginia Commis
	sion of Fisheries and the Maryland Commission of Tide
	water Fisheries.

	The new joint commission would have been empowered
	to conduct a full conservation program in the Potomac,
	to hire such personnel as its budget would permit, and
	to purchase and operate patrol boats and other equipment
	in the enforcement of all oyster laws in the Potomac. It
	also would have been given a wide regulatory power for
	the licensing of boats, the enforcement of laws, and the
	taxing of oysters. There was ample provision for due
	notice and hearing in the adoption and promulgation of
	such regulations.

	All these ten articles to be added to the Compact, it was
	provided, might be renounced by either state, subject only
	to giving one year's notice to the other state. The original
	Compact had said nothing about the means of abrogating
	or renouncing its obligations.

	With Virginia's refusal to participate in setting up a
	permanent joint commission, Maryland officials have felt
	rather hopeless about saving the oyster beds in the Poto-