69 A.2d 912 | Md. | 1949
The question in this case is whether a statute which empowers the Mayor and Aldermen of Frederick, a municipal corporation, to condemn a specific piece of property, located within the corporate limits of the City of Frederick, and belonging to the Board of Education of Frederick County, is a local law within the meaning of Article XVI of the State Constitution, so that it may be referred under that Article to the voters of Frederick County.
It appears from the record that the land comprising the campus upon which the Frederick High School is located, was purchased by the Board of Education in the fall of 1938. At that time it contained some 39 acres of land with access from existing streets, but without danger to the student body from these streets. At the time of the purchase, the City of Frederick desired to extend its existing park system, and in compliance with this desire, a tract of six acres from the northerly portion of the 39 acres was sold and conveyed to the City as an addition to a public park. The remaining acres were developed for school purposes. The present high school building was placed on a portion of them, and the part to the north was designed for grass plots, for future use for experimental agricultural plots, and for public buildings. So far as appearances went there was no division between the school tract and the six acres conveyed to the city for a park. In the spring of 1948, a tract of land lying north and west of the school tract was purchased by some private parties for the purpose of building an apartment project. The city agreed with these private interests to construct a street through the high school campus. After a contract to that effect was signed, the County Board of Education was consulted, but the Board unanimously disapproved the suggestion. The City then attempted to condemn the land. The Board of Education filed a bill in equity to enjoin this condemnation, and after the case was fully heard, the court held *175
that the City was without authority to condemn the land of another public body, and dismissed the bill. (See Northern Cent.Ry. Co. v. Mayor City Council of Baltimore,
Two minor contentions are that the Mayor and Aldermen of Frederick have no sufficient interest to bring the bill of complaint, and that there is no showing that the interest of the individual complainants, Price and Brunk, is sufficient in amount to give jurisdiction to a court of equity. We think it is implicit in the authority of a municipal corporation to take necessary legal action to put in force its ordinances, or any amendment to its charter. The fact that the point might be determined in a condemnation case is not sufficient reason to hold that a city may not, in advance, seek to check a referendum which would have the practical effect, at least, of putting off any condemnation until after the voters had passed upon the question. The city has the right to have determined whether it has the present power to open a street, a matter peculiarly within its province, and one which may be important for many reasons. In any event, the taxpayers interested in avoiding the waste of funds derived from taxation, which would be involved in conducting a referendum, have a right to bring such action in representation of all other taxpayers who may be involved. SunCab Co. v. Cloud,
The Referendum Article of the Constitution was submitted to the people of the state by the Act of 1914, Chapter 673, and was ratified by the voters on November 2, 1915. In a case involving the provisions of this article, decided in 1917, there is contained a discussion of its purposes. It was stated that, after the Civil War, abuses *177
began to creep into legislation, which were alleged to have grown out of the control of the legislators by great corporations and by political parties, by means of which it was felt that the government was prostituted to corrupt and selfish purposes. Proposals were made to abolish the principle of representation and to adopt the principle of initiation of legislation by the people, and the principle of referring legislation already adopted by the Legislature to the people. The last of these proposals was adopted by this state in the Referendum Amendment, and this Court said "The referendum, broadly speaking, is the reservation by the people of a state, or local subdivision thereof, of the right to have submitted for their approval or rejection, under certain prescribed conditions, any law or part of a law passed by the law making body. It was designed as a modification of, or as a supplement to the principle of representation with which we had long been familiar, and it was claimed for it that it would prevent the recurrence of many of the abuses to which we have referred." Beal v. State,
The Referendum Article provides for the submission to the registered voters of any act or part of any act of the General Assembly (Section 1(a)), but by Section 3(a) it is provided that a public local law for any one county or the City of Baltimore shall be referred by the Secretary of State "only to the people of said County or City of Baltimore, upon a referendum petition of ten per cent. of the qualified voters of said County or City of Baltimore as the case may be, calculated upon the whole number of votes cast therein respectively for Governor at the last preceding gubernatorial election." When sufficient petitions have been filed before the first day of June, the act then petitioned against shall not take effect until thirty days after its approval by a majority of the electors voting thereon at the next ensuing election for members of the House of Representatives. (Section 2.) This is not true of an emergency law, but the act in question here was not passed as an emergency law. *178 The sole question here is whether the act is a local law within the meaning of the Referendum Article.
There are exceptions contained in the Article itself to the kind of laws which may be referred. No law making any appropriation for maintaining the State Government, or for maintaining or aiding any public institution, not exceeding the next previous appropriation for the same purpose, shall be subject to referendum. (Section 2.) Nor shall any law or constitutional amendment licensing, regulating, prohibiting, or submitting to local option the manufacture or sale of malt or spirituous liquors be referred or repealed under the provisions of the Article. (Section 6.) These are the only specific exceptions, but this court has made a further exception. This exception is of those acts which, although local as distinguished from general, are confined in their operation to part of a county, and should, obviously, not be properly referred to all of the voters of a county, many of whom have no interest in them. This implied exception is the one under which the appellees claim the act in question belongs. The appellant, on the other hand, contends that while the act is, in form, an amendment to the charter of Frederick, it nevertheless vitally affects the whole school system of Frederick County and, therefore, is a proper one to be referred to all the voters of that county.
Cases in which this implied exception was made began withStrange v. Levy,
The general question of what is a local law involves many considerations. Some laws, local in form, affect the interest of the whole state. In Norris v. Mayor and City Council ofBaltimore,
In Bradshaw v. Lankford,
By analogy to the decisions in these cases a local law which on its face appears to apply only to the City of Frederick, and to the condemnation of a piece of property within the geographical limits of that City, and to be an amendment of a municipal charter, may, notwithstanding its form, be in effect a local law affecting the entire county. There can be no doubt the Frederick High School is not a city school. The title to the property is in the Board of Education of Frederick County. The Board is the agent of the county in looking after the buildings and grounds, and the funds for their upkeep are county funds requested from the County Commissioners *183
of the County. Clauss v. Board of Education,
The appellees, however, contend that the meaning of "Public Local Law" in the Referendum Article is geographical, and that any law which primarily affects geographically only a portion of a county, is not a public local law subject to referendum, whatever may be its construction for other purposes under the cases we have referred to. They contend that this is shown by the decision in Dinneen v. Rider, supra, chiefly relied on by them and held by the Chancellor to be controlling of this case. They point to the fact that the act in that case did potentially affect the people of the whole county because there was a possibility of a tax being levied on the entire property of the county. But, nevertheless, since the act primarily (as said by the court) affected only a part of the county, it was not referable. We are unable to agree that geography alone determines the character of an act. We think the Referendum Article intended the term "Public Local Law" to have the same general meaning as it had for other purposes, and to be judged by the same rules of construction. The exceptions which this court found to exist in the Annapolis, Crisfield and Chestertown cases, were obvious exceptions, because the acts construed in those cases had no possible interest for the parts of the several counties not included within the limits of those towns.
The case of Dinneen v. Rider is somewhat different, but we think it is clearly distinguishable from the case before us. In that case the whole question was providing water, sewerage and drainage facilities for the Metropolitan District of Baltimore County. The only way in which the people of the balance of the county outside of that district were affected was by the very remote possibility that they might have to pay in taxes for some of the improvements if, and only if, the charges, assessments and taxes levied within the District were not sufficient. It was obvious that the thickly settled portion of the county, adjacent to Baltimore City, which *185 comprised the Metropolitan District, was the chief source of taxation, and the outlying districts, consisting of small towns and country property, were very unlikely to ever be called upon to have to pay anything and might be entitled to re-imbursement from the Metropolitan Area. This conditional liability was thought by this court to be too remote to justify the submission of a question affecting the health of the residents in the metropolitan area to voters in remote country districts which had no interest in accomplishing the purposes of the act. It concluded that the Referendum Article did not intend such a result, and that such a vote was not within the contemplation of that Article. The situation is entirely different here. The people of Frederick County, as a whole, pay for the upkeep of the schools, including Frederick High School. Many of them outside of the City send their children to that High School. They are interested in seeing that the school is maintained as an up-to-date, modern educational institution, with sufficient grounds and space for additional buildings, if necessary. They are entitled to pass upon the question whether the condemnation of a street through the ground will interfere with the proper administration of the High School. We think that the act is a local act affecting all of Frederick County, within the meaning of the Referendum Article, and, therefore, it can properly be submitted to the voters of the county.
So finding, we hold that the decree of the lower court should be reversed and the bill dismissed.
Decree reversed and bill of complaint dismissed with costs. *186