269 P. 630 | Cal. | 1928
[EDITORS' NOTE: THIS PAGE CONTAINS HEADNOTES. HEADNOTES ARE NOT AN OFFICIAL PRODUCT OF THE COURT, THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED.] *655 This is a proceeding wherein the City of Pasadena, a municipal corporation, applies for a writ of mandate directed to the respondent, as the city clerk of said City, requiring her, in her official capacity, to certify to the passage and content of a certain ordinance, theretofore adopted by the city council of said City, and to transmit a certified copy thereof to the chief executive officer of each of the several municipalities referred to in said ordinance, in accordance with the terms thereof and of a certain act of the legislature, known and referred to herein as the "Metropolitan Water District Act," approved May 10, 1927. The respondent herein has appeared to said application and has presented and argued various objections to the validity of said ordinance and of said act. A number of amici curiae have also filed briefs herein which will be considered in the course of this opinion.
The Metropolitan Water District Act, adopted in 1927 (Stats. 1927, p. 694), is an act entitled: "An act to provide for the incorporation, government and management of metropolitan water districts, authorizing such districts to incur bonded debt and to acquire, construct, operate and manage *656 works and property, providing for the taxation of property therein and the performance of certain functions relating thereto by officers of counties, providing for the addition of area thereto and the exclusion of area therefrom and authorizing municipal corporations to aid and participate in the incorporation of such districts." The act in its body provides for the organization of so-called metropolitan water districts for the purpose of developing, storing and distributing water for domestic purposes, and which districts are to be formed of the territory included within the corporate boundary of any two or more municipalities, which need not be contiguous, and which districts are to be incorporated and organized and thereafter governed, maintained, and operated as in said act provided. Such districts when so incorporated are to be each a separate and independent political corporate entity. The act proceeds to provide that the method for the inception, organization and incorporation of such districts shall be as follows: The legislative body of any municipality desiring to take the initiative in the formation of such district may do so by the adoption of an ordinance, declaring that public convenience and necessity require the incorporation of a municipal water district and that the names of the municipalities proposed to be included within the said district are those specified in said ordinance, which shall also contain an estimate of the preliminary cost and expense of conducting the proceedings for the organization of such district and for the apportionment thereof among the municipalities proposed to be included therein. When the municipality initiating such proceeding has adopted such ordinance it shall be the duty of the clerk of the legislative body thereof to certify to the same and to transmit a certified copy thereof to the executive officer of each of the other municipalities designated therein and which other municipalities are required, within sixty days after the receipt of such certified copy of such ordinance, by the action of the legislative body thereof, to either approve or reject such ordinance without alteration or amendment. The failure of the legislative body of any such municipality to so act upon such ordinance within said period is to be deemed a rejection thereof. Within 120 days after the transmission of such ordinance and after the municipalities named therein have signified *657 by their action or nonaction their adoption or rejection thereof, the legislative body of the initiating city shall call a special election in all of the municipalities, the legislative bodies of which have approved such ordinance, at which election the proposition of the incorporation of such metropolitan water district shall be submitted to the electors residing within such municipalities for their adoption or rejection. The ordinance calling such election shall contain the details relating to the holding thereof in each of the several cities which have approved the original ordinance. Such election may be held concurrently with or may be consolidated with any primary or general election, in which event the precinct, polling places, and election officers of such primary or general election shall be the same for such special election. The majority of the electors voting affirmatively shall be sufficient to cause the adoption of the proposition and to organize and incorporate such water district by each of the respective cities whose electors shall vote thereon and to authorize the governing body of the initiating city to transmit to the secretary of state a certified copy of such proceedings up to and including the holding of such election, together with the result thereof. Within ten days after the receipt of such certificate the secretary of state shall issue a certificate of incorporation declaring such district duly incorporated, and shall transmit to each of the municipalities therein a copy of such certificate of incorporation; whereupon the incorporation of such metropolitan water district shall become effective from the date of the issuance of such certificate or certificates, and such district shall thereupon and thereafter become vested with all the rights, privileges and powers in said Metropolitan Water District Act provided. Section 5 of said act prescribes with much detail the powers with which such water district and the officers in charge thereof are to be invested, and, generally speaking, they are in substance the same powers with which public utility districts of various sorts have in the past by various legislative acts been invested. Particular reference to certain of those powers will hereinafter be made. The exercise of such powers is by the terms of said act to be entrusted to and performed by and through a board of directors, which shall consist of at least one representative from each municipality which has become, *658 for the purposes stated in said act, an integral part of such water district. In addition to the powers with which said district has, as heretofore stated, been invested, the act provides for the particular powers, and the method of their exercise, which the said board of directors shall possess in order to carry forward the purposes for which such district has been organized. It is not necessary to enumerate herein these powers, nor to set forth the detail of their exercise, and this for the reason that the concluding section of said act provides that "If any section, subsection, sentence, clause or phrase of this act is for any reason held to be unconstitutional, such decision shall not affect the validity of the remaining portion of said act." We are concerned in this decision with those questions only which arise upon the threshold of the formation of the particular metropolitan water district which has been initiated by the City of Pasadena and with those limited considerations which involve the constitutionality of the act itself as distinguished from the validity of the particular portions of said act and which are to be put to trial after the organization of the district and in the course of the conduct of its various operations as provided for in said act.
[1] The first contention which the respondent makes, and in which she is joined by the several amici curiae who have appeared herein, is that the Metropolitan Water District Act is not a general law. This contention requires but brief consideration. The act purports to be a general law applicable to all portions of the state of California embracing municipalities which might desire to unite in a larger organization with the object of accomplishing a common purpose which it might not be possible or practical for such municipalities, acting singly or separately, to accomplish. The mere fact that the legislative act contemplated a course of action which might, under present conditions, be confined to municipalities of a particular region, does not militate against the validity of the act in question as a general law. The act does not by its terms attempt any classification, either of the municipalities which may take advantage of its provisions or of the area to which its operation might in the nature of things be confined; but, even had it done so, the act would be none the less a general law under the authority of our decision in the *659
case of Wores v. Imperial Irr. Dist.,
[3] The next contention which the respondent and amicicuriae urge against the validity of said act relates to the method provided therein for the initiation of the proceeding for the formation of metropolitan water districts. The respondent argues that to permit one municipality proposing to take the initiative in the formation of such water districts to impose upon other municipalities duties, or to invest such municipalities with powers in the course of the formation of such districts which are not within the scope of the duties and powers of such municipalities, as conferred upon them by the particular terms of their respective charters, would be invalid as in violation of article XI, section 6, of the constitution, which expressly delegates to chartered cities the right to make and enforce all laws and regulations in respect to their own municipal affairs. This contention raises the question as to whether the general purpose to be subserved by the organization of the metropolitan water district through the co-operation of several municipalities, as contemplated in the terms of said act, is or is not a municipal affair. It may be admitted that, generally speaking, the distribution of water within municipalities would be as to each of such municipalities *660
a municipal affair, but it would be entirely too narrow an interpretation of the purposes and scope of the Metropolitan Water District Act to hold that, because the distribution of water for domestic use in each of a number of the municipalities within a designated area is a municipal affair, the formation of a common purpose for the acquisition of water in large quantities from sources outside of such municipalities, and even outside of the area within which they exist, and the distribution of such water, when so acquired, among such cities, in accordance with a common plan, and with a view to achieving equitability in the distribution and use of such water, would in any sense be, as to each or any of such combined municipalities, a municipal affair. The impossibility or impracticability of any one or more of such municipalities acting separately and independently in the acquisition and distribution of such water would seem to argue conclusively that in achieving such object by the means provided for in said act the municipalities engaged therein could not be held to be engaged in the conduct of a merely municipal affair. The language used by this court in deciding a similar question in the case of Pixley v. Saunders,
[4] The contention of the respondent that the act under review is unconstitutional for the reason that the persons who are ultimately to be affected thereby are given no voice in the formation of such district is answered by the terms of the act itself; for, while it is provided therein that a single municipality may set in motion the proceedings for the formation of such water district, the act itself provides that after the initial action is taken, the question of whether or not the residents and electors of each and all of the municipalities within the proposed area shall approve or disapprove the action thus taken is to be committed in each separate municipality to a special election, and as to each the act is not to be further operative until a majority of the electors shall at such special election approve the initiatory proceedings which have thus far been taken.
[5] We have thus disposed of the several questions which arise upon the threshold of the proceedings which have thus far been taken looking to the formation of the metropolitan water district in question, and we, therefore, come to the main objection which is urged by the respondent and also by the several amici curiae against the validity of said legislative act and of the proceedings which have thus far been initiated thereunder. This objection is that under the terms of said act the necessary cost and expenditures incident to the functioning of said metropolitan water district *662
in a way of acquiring large quantities of water from outside sources and of providing for the distribution thereof for domestic uses among the inhabitants of the various municipalities which may elect to come within the terms and be bound by the burdens and be the recipients of the benefits of said act and of the incorporation of said water district thereunder are to be imposed in the form of taxes upon the people of these several municipalities, and are in the nature of assessments to be levied and collected upon their individual properties for benefits conferred that the imposition of such assessments without an opportunity on the part of the property owners to be heard upon the question as to whether the burden of such assessment shall be imposed, or as to whether it is their desire that their property should receive the benefits which are to follow the imposition of such burdens, renders the entire act unconstitutional and void as contrary to the provisions of both the state and the federal constitution which relate to due process of law. This contention presents precisely the same question which was presented to this court in several recent cases. (Henshaw v. Foster,
Various other propositions have been urged by the respondent and more particularly by amici curiae in their somewhat elaborate briefs, but we are of the opinion that these are practically all covered by the matters considered and decided in the foregoing opinion. Whatever questions may arise as to the validity of particular provisions of the Metropolitan Water District Act other than those herein expressly considered will come into view in the course of the administration of the affairs of this particular metropolitan water district after it shall have reached the stage of incorporation, and entered upon the administration of its diversified functions as a corporate body. It is not necessary to anticipate these questions in this preliminary stage of its proposed incorporation.
Let the writ issue as prayed for.
Waste, C.J., Seawell, J., Shenk, J., Curtis, J., and Langdon, J., concurred. *667