56 S.W.2d 368 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1933
Affirming.
The appellant and plaintiff below, M.O. Cassady, was and is the duly elected, qualified, and acting sheriff of Oldham county. He filed this declaratory judgments action in the circuit court of that county against it, its fiscal court, its county board of education, and the members thereof, for a declaration of his rights concerning the amount of fees to which he is entitled for collecting local school taxes to supplement the state pro rata of public funds for school purposes. The fiscal court and the county board of education contend that, under section 4399a-8 of the 1930 Edition of Carroll's Kentucky Statutes, plaintiff is not entitled to charge exceeding 1 per cent. for the collection of local taxes for school purposes, whereas plaintiff contends that he is entitled to deduct 4 per cent. of such taxes as his fee for collecting them. In making that contention, plaintiff by his counsel necessarily makes the additional one that the section of the statute referred to, as amended by chapter 81, page 279, of the Session Acts of 1926, is unconstitutional and void. The original section 4399a-8 is section 8 of chapter 36, page 148, of the Session Acts of 1920, but its amendment by the 1926 act, supra, conformed the section to the language in which it now appears in the edition of the Kentucky Statutes referred to.
Both the original 1920 act and the 1926 amendatory one enacted and preserved this language in the section: "Provided, however, the commission allowed the sheriff for the collection of such tax (local school tax) shall not exceed one per cent. (1%) of the total school tax collected." *774
Since the enactment of the statute, the amount of the commission of the sheriff for the collection of such local school taxes as limited therein, has been before this court in the cases of Ross v. County Board of Education,
The 1920 act is attacked in this case upon the grounds (a) that it is a revenue raising statute, and (b) that it originated in the Senate branch of the General Assembly, contrary to the provisions of section 47 of our Constitution. It will be observed that neither of the involved acts purport to levy a tax upon the people of the state at large for school or any other purposes. On the contrary, they each delegate authority to, and confer power upon, the various county boards of education and fiscal courts of counties (by pursuing the plan therein outlined) to levy a school tax within prescribed limitations to supplement the state school fund in the county where the plan is adopted. None of the money collected through the operation of the delegated authority, if employed, ever finds its way into the state *775 treasury, but is used solely for the benefit of the local schools of the county as supplemental to the per capita distribution of school funds out of the state treasury.
The question as to the application of the phrase, "bills for raising revenue," as employed in section 47, supra, of our Constitution, was before this court in the case of Rankin v. City of Henderson, 7 S.W. 174, 9 Ky. Law Rep. 861, and we held that the term "revenue" therein applied "alone to the state or the revenue that goes into or properly belongs to the state treasury." In substantiation thereof it was reasoned that: "In taxing the people of a town or county for a local purpose, the money collected is not to be considered revenue for the state or for state purposes, although the corporation, to the extent of the power conferred, is but the agent of the state to regulate and control, subject to constitutional restriction, those who live within its jurisdiction. An act bringing into existence the local government, with the power to impose a tax for municipal purposes, together with all the machinery necessary to run it, being local in its nature, and in aid of local interests, may originate in either house; and in cases where the object of taxation is purely local, and in aid of local purposes, it is not the legitimate subject of inquiry whether the act conferring the power originated in the one house or the other. * * * Bullitt v. City of Paducah, 3 S.W. 802 (8 Ky. Law Rep. 870); Commonwealth v. Bailey,
It is insisted in avoidance thereof that school taxes are not municipal taxes; but, on the contrary, that they are state taxes, although locally levied and collected for local purposes only, and for which reason they are not embraced within the doctrine of the Rankin and other cases. In support of that argument we are cited to a number of opinions from this court holding that administrative officers under the public school system are state officers, and it is sought to be deduced therefrom that all public school funds, howsoever levied or collected, are likewise state funds. It is our conclusion, however, that the deduction does not necessarily follow. The school officers, so declared to be state ones, in each and every instance administer, in some form or fashion, the public school system, the expense of which is in part at least defrayed by state funds and to the extent of each year's per capita division *776 thereof. But it does not necessarily follow that locally produced funds for the same purpose, and to be expended exclusively in the local territory producing them, ipso facto become state school funds.
The question was determined by us to the contrary in the recent case of Talbott, Auditor of Public Accounts, v. Kentucky State Board of Education,
If, however, our reasoning up to this point should be doubted, upon the ground that all school taxes are state revenues so as not to bring the statute under consideration within the doctrine of the Rankin Case, then plaintiff occupies no better position, since in the late case of Livingston County v. Dunn,
It is likewise argued from the premise assumed that, the 1920 act being unconstitutional and void (for the reason above stated), the 1926 one is also void, and in no event would it be applicable to the plaintiff, since he was elected and inducted into office before it became *778 effective. But, having reached the conclusion that the 1920 act was and is valid and not void, we need not determine any of the questions argued with reference to the 1926 act. However, it might be proper to say that chapter 172, page 808, of the 1926 act, repealed and re-enacted, at least in part, section 8 of the 1920 act, now section 4399a-8, supra, of our Statutes, but by its section 4 the same limitation on the fees of the sheriff for collecting local school taxes was re-enacted and preserved. So that, at the time plaintiff entered upon the duties of the office of sheriff of Oldham county, the limitation of his fees for collecting such taxes as contained in the 1920 act was obligatory upon him, and chapter 172 of the 1926 act, though it repealed at least in part that section of the 1920 act, re-enacted the same limitation which preserved such obligatory force of the 1920 act.
The trial court, as we have seen, so concluded and dismissed plaintiff's petition, and which we think was and is correct. Wherefore the judgment is affirmed.