450 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

Article VII dealing with the powers assigned or reserved to local
government demands careful review. While I strongly endorse the
principles of Home Rule, I believe any mandatory or implied shift
of powers to the county governments should be considered with care.
I have grave reservations over any partial or ambiguous grant of au-
thority that is not exactly balanced by a direct line of accountable re-
sponsibility to the electorate.

Sections 7. 08 and 7. 09 are sought to reform existing legislative prac-
tices that have been subject on isolated occasions to deliberate political
manipulation and abuse. However, I do not believe that the classifi-
cation system is the absolute or ultimate solution to this problem.
Other alternatives should be explored to protect the counties without
freezing them into rigid, restrictive categories.

Since a constitution is designed not only to serve the present but
to anticipate the future, it is vital that provisions to facilitate regional
government be included for that time — no matter how distant —
when local governments desire to unite in some or several cooperative
ventures.

Before concluding this testimony, I wish to note that this message
has been intentionally limited to those major points and particular
passages I most enthusiastically endorse or most seriously question. In
all cases, I feel that there is room for further discussion and continued
call for compromise based upon consistent logic and practical con-
siderations. Flexibility for future generations compels flexibility in
present attitudes.

The challenges of your charge are as inspiring as they are formida-
ble. This State is blessed and commended by the experience and
talent of its delegates to this convention. In the weeks ahead you will
find the intellectual demands exhausting, the efforts almost super-
human, the decisions often agonizing. Yet you shall meet these de-
mands and make those decisions necessary to create a totally vital
and viable document. If at times you despair, or fear that consensus is
impossible, compromise inconceivable and, in fact, this is too great
a test for human minds, know that encouragement and inspiration
reach out to you from the past — that what you attempt has been
successfully accomplished before.

Confidence and comfort for today are to be gained from memories
of our nation's first Constitutional Convention, where experienced
and dedicated — yet fallible and mortal — men assembled to constitute
a totally new, representative and democratic government. Conscious