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a constitution very much upon the former lines.
PRESENT CONSTITUTION.
5.
The Buergerschaft is, at once, the Land Parliament and the City and County Council of Hansestadt. It consists of 110 members, 84 elected directly from 21 constituencies and 26 elected by proportional representation methods from reserve lists of the political parties. It elects its own President (or" "Speaker"), It has legislative and deliberative powers and is the budgeting authority. It also has the duty of electing the Senate, which is the executive. It has power to dismiss the Senate or individual Senators and to ask them questions in public about the conduct of their business.
6. The Senate consists at present of twelve Senators who elect two of their number as first and second Buergermeister. This office is for one year but they may be re-elected and could not hold office for any number of years. If the first Buergermeister vacates office he is not replaced by the second; there is a new election. But the second Buergermeister always deputises for the first in his absence.
7.
The first Buergermeister presides over the Senate and acts in the same capacity as a Minister-President in the Laender, except that, while a Minister- President forms his own Cabinet and can dismiss his Ministers, the Buergermeister in Hamburg is elected by the Senate and Senators can be dismissed only by the Buergerschaft. Although the Buergerschaft thus holds the control, it is itself subject to check by the Senate to a certain extent. The Senate can require it to meet; can hold up its business in order that its own business may be taken first and its own speakers heard; and can delay the second reading of bills. introduced by Buergerschaft members for a month, during which time it is at liberty to introduce legislation of its own to cover the same subject. Such legislation must be considered before the Buergerschaft resumes the debate on its own bill.
8.
Thus the Senate exercises a dual role. Primarily it acts as a Cabinet of Ministers but it also preserves in a very limited degree some of the functions of a second chamber.
9. Each department of the State is managed by a Senator assisted by a Committee appointed by the Buergerschaft, generally in the proportion of about two-thirds from its own members and one-third co-opted specialists. If the Senator differs from the Committee, the Senate, as a whole, decides. It is therefore the Senate and not the Buergerschaft which controls the execution of the programme, but the Buergerschaft controls the programme itself through the Budget.
/LOCAL DISTRICTS