penses, with itemized schedules following each sum so appropriated whenever more than one item is included. These schedules "represent the initial plan of distribution and apportionment of the appropriations." Each lump-sum appropriation must be paid out in accordance with the schedule which relates to it, unless and until such schedule is amended. In order to give flexibility to the expenditure of the appropriations and to provide, at the same time, for executive control over the spending officers, the governor is empowered to authorize transfers between items within any schedule, thus amending the schedule. He may make transfers in the appropriations of the executive department, and may approve or disapprove any requests for transfers, which are submitted to him by other spending agencies relative to their own appropriations. Whenever a schedule is amended by the governor, it must be transmitted with his approval to the comptroller, who thereafter is required to pay out the appropriation, or whatever balance may remain, in accordance with the amended schedule. Finally, it is provided that all transfers and changes in the schedules, made or approved by the governor, must be reported by him to the next session of the legislature.

While the budget amendment places certain definite limitations upon the action of the legislature in considering the budget, it prescribes no very definite procedure. It will, therefore, be of interest to note briefly the procedure that was followed by the legislature in the consideration and passage of the budget bill. The bill, as has been stated, was introduced simultaneously in each house of the legislature on January 29, and it was immediately referred to the finance committee of the senate and to the ways and means committee of the house. The senate finance committee seems to have taken the lead in the consideration of the bill. Joint sessions of the two committees were held, and the various appropriations were critically reviewed. No public hearings were held by either committee on the budget, since it was not necessary, as formerly, for the spending agencies to appear before the committees urging their requests for appropriations. The only matter that now concerned the state agencies was to see that the allowances made to them by the governor were not reduced or eliminated by the action of the committees or the legislature. The senate finance committee, however, found occasion to call before it a few of the department heads, for the purpose of explaining some of the budget allowances, and also in one or two instances the committee desired to ascertain whether or not certain subordinates gave full time to the state work.

Section 3 of the Budget Act, Ch. 206, Laws 1918.

The governor also explained to the finance committee certain of the appropriations. It appears that the members of both the finance committee of the senate and the ways and means committee of the house studied the budget bill rather closely and found, as a result, very few items that they could attack or criticize.

On March 20 the governor submitted to the senate, with the consent of both houses, his first supplemental budget, which under the provisions of the budget amendment became a part of the budget bill as amendments or supplements to the appropriations and items contained in it." On March 22 the finance committee reported the budget bill and supplement favorably to the senate. A motion to defer action on the bill was voted down, and the committee's favorable report was adopted. Immediately the president of the senate submitted a second supplement to the budget by the governor, who asked that it might also be made a part of the budget bill. Upon a motion the additional supplement was accepted. The budget bill was then read a second time and ordered to be printed for a third reading. It passed the senate without amendment on March 26, and was sent to the house where it had its first reading on March 27. It was reported out of house committee on March 28 and read a second time.

Among the several amendments that were proposed at this time, two were adopted, one eliminating the salary of the assistant chairman of the roads commission, amounting to $2000 (the governor having reduced it from $3000 by his first supplemental budget), and the other striking out the appropriation for a director of farm products amounting to $12,000. The elimination of the latter item would have followed as a matter of course, since the bill creating the office had been defeated in the legislature, so that only $2000 was really eliminated from the governor's budget for each of the two years. When this amount is compared with the total budget of each year, aggregating $3,750,000 from the general funds, the house, although the majority was politically opposed to the governor, may nevertheless be regarded as approving the governor's budget practically as he submitted it. The rules of the house were suspended and the bill was passed on the same day that it was amended. The senate, being of the same political faith as the governor, refused to accede to the amendments of the house and a conference committee was appointed. The first conference committee disagreed and another was appointed; this committee made its

• Senate Journal of Proceedings, pp. 720-733.

Ibid., pp. 812-813.

report on March 30, when the senate concurred in the amendments of the house and finally passed the budget bill as thus amended. Since the governor had the assurance that the budget bill would be passed within three legislative days before the end of the session (April 1), he did not issue a proclamation, as provided for in the budget amendment extending the session.

During the 1916 session of the legislature between 35 and 40 bills, appropriating money out of the state treasury, were passed and became law. The legislature of 1918, acting under the provisions of the budget amendment, passed only seven bills making appropriations out of the state treasury, two of which were duplicates of two others and were for that reason vetoed by the governor. Another was also vetoed, and still another was reduced by half. The four bills approved by the governor carried appropriations totaling only $19,000. The seven appropriation bills which were passed appropriated unexpended funds now in the treasury and, upon the ruling of the attorney general, were not in conflict with the budget amendment, which requires such bills to make provision for their own revenue, since the budget bill which was passed in compliance with the budget amendment does not go into effect until October 1, 1918. The provisions of the budget amendment with reference to supplementary appropriation bills operated as an effective check upon the passage of the usual large number of special appropriation bills, which have in former years been one of the main causes of recurring deficits in the finances of the state. There was not, therefore, a single supplemental appropriation bill passed for the years 1918 and 1919 in addition to the budget bill.

As yet, nothing can be said of the execution of the Maryland budget, but certain conclusions may be drawn from the operation of the first two stages in the budgetary procedure, namely, the formulation of the budget by the governor, and the ratification of it by the legislature. The strongest indication that the budget was well prepared by the executive may be seen in the fact that the members of the lower house of the legislature, the majority of whom were politically hostile to the governor, found little in the budget bill that they could attack and only a few items that they cared to amend. It was evident that the various state departments and institutions felt that their requests for appropriations had been carefully considered by the governor, and that he had allowed them as much as was commensurate with the probable revenues of the state. For these reasons the spending agencies generally accepted the governor's allowances for appropriations and assumed that the legislature would ratify them as included in the budget.

The legislature in its action upon the budget seems to have been effective as a reviewing and criticizing agent of the governor's program. Most of the review work, however, was done by the finance and ways and means committees. The intent of the budget amendment, it appears, was that more consideration should be given to the budget upon the floors of the legislature than it received this year. There is room for much improvement in the legislative procedure for handling the budget. While it is true that every member of the legislature was supplied with a printed copy of the governor's budget, and knew at once from the printed journal of each house just what supplements the governor had made, still it is not probable that many of the members scrutinized the budget very closely.

The governor's budget has so far given general public satisfaction and no desire has been expressed to return to the former haphazard methods of making appropriations. Of course, it must be borne in mind that the governor was not so free in making his budget recommendations as he might be if he were the real head of the administrative branch of the state government. He was also hampered in gathering his budget data by a system of public accounting that is not at all adapted to efficient budget making. Adjustment and reform along these lines will tend greatly to improve the system and to make it a real executive budget. In addition to these changes, Maryland needs to adopt methods for standardizing the positions and salaries of the state employees, and also to install a central purchasing department for state agencies, both of which, however, are not directly a part of the budgetary procedure but are designed to contribute effectively to the successful operation of the budget system.

Bureau of Municipal Research, New York City.

A. E. BUCK."

Budget Progress in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The New York legislature of 1916 passed a law establishing a legislative budget system for the state. In the same year, through the efforts. of Senator Walter E. Edge (now governor), the legislature of New Jersey enacted a law providing for a state budget system of the executive type.2

Mr. A. E. Buck was the specialist secured by Governor Harrington to aid in preparing the budget and the budget bill.

1 Laws of 1916, ch. 130. See American Political Science Review, XI, 111-113 (1917) for an analysis of the law.

Laws of 1916, ch. 15. See American Political Science Review, x1, 113 (1917) for an analysis of the law.

Two budgets have since been made up in each of these states under the operation of their respective laws. In 1916 the legislature of Massachusetts created a supervisor of administration, who took over the budget duties of the commission on economy and efficiency established in 1912. It will be of interest to record briefly the progress made in the budget procedure of these states since the passage of these laws.

New York. Each of the three budget agencies-the governor, the comptroller, and the joint legislative budget committee-used a separate set of estimate forms in collecting the data for the 1917 budget. The preparation of so many forms, twenty-one in all, created a great deal of confusion among the various state agencies, and besides there was little uniformity in the information so furnished. Before the budget was completed the need for a uniform set of estimates was evident. When it came time to make up the 1918 budget the three budget agencies worked out and agreed upon a standard set of estimate forms. Full instructions were sent out with these forms, and as a result the estimates when filed were much more satisfactory in their contents than they had been the previous year. However, the practice was continued this year of making and presenting to the legislature three separate compilations of the estimates, one by each of the budget agencies. The main purpose of each of these compilations seems to be to tabulate the estimates, and even this is done more or less incompletely. All three are lacking in full and complete information as to how the expenditure program is to be financed. Besides, there is the added and useless expense of thousands of dollars to the state for editing and publishing three compilations, which are only transcripts, more or less complete, of the same data. It would seem wise to combine the good points, both in form and arrangement, of the three compilations into a single document, which would contain all the information submitted upon the standard estimate forms, and at the same time set forth a complete survey of the state's financial resources together with the condition of its bonded indebtedness.

For three years Governor Whitman, with the aid of a special budget staff, has prepared a tentative appropriation bill and submitted it to the legislature at the beginning of the session. In the first of these acts, which was submitted to the legslature of 1916, the governor proposed to bring all appropriations into a single bill and to make the appropriations in lump sums with itemized schedules and a system of transfers under executive control. The legislative committees in preparing their 'Laws of 1916, ch. 296; also Laws of 1912, ch. 719.