32 Minn. 108 | Minn. | 1884
By an act of the legislature entitled “An act to regulate and establish the salary and fees of certain officers in Bamsey county, Minnesota,” (Sp. Laws 1878, c. 216,) it was provided that the salary and compensation of the respective officers for the city of St. Paul and county of Bamsey, named in the act, “for all services-now or hereafter * * * to be performed by them or any of them, respectively, are hereby established and fixed * * as in this act-specified, and no other or greater salary or compensation of any kind shall be allowed or paid to or received by any of such officers as additional compensation, or for deputies or assistants or clerk-hire, or for any cause, or on any account whatever, or in any way or manner. * * * The salary and compensation of the city engineer of said city of St. Paul shall be $2,250, and there shall be allowed such sums, in addition for assistants in the engineer’s office as may be deemed indispensable by the board of public works. * * * The salary and compensation of the assessor of said county and city shall be $4,000 per annum, and no more; and no other sum shall be paid, as clerk-hire or otherwise, for any duty or work performed or done in 'the-discharge of such office. * * * And the salary and compensation of the auditor of said county shall be $4,500 per annum, and all the clerks necessary for the auditor shall be paid out of such sum.”'
Under the amended charter of the city of St. Paul (Sp. Laws 1874, c. 1, p. 88) the city was divided into five wards, and it provided for
The question to be determined here is whether the assistant assessors, appointed by the county assessor to aid him in the matter of the township and ward assessments, in pursuance of the act of 1875, are, since the act of 1878, entitled to compensation from the county, exclusive of and in addition to the amount allowed the principal assessor by the terms of the last-named act ? The office and duties of the assistant assessors are necessarily ancillary to and part of the office of the county assessor. Their work is under his direction, and he is responsible for it, and it must be certified by him in his own name. It was therefore, we think, “done in the discharge of such office,” in contemplation of the provision of the act of 1878, above quoted. The assistant assessors are officers by the same tenure as deputies of certain other officers, who act for and are responsible to their principals, but they constitute a part of the working force of the one office of county assessor. We may concede that, under the act of 1875, the compensation of the assistants was to be paid by the
Judgment affirmed.
Dickinson, J., because of illness, took no part in this decision.