47 Pa. 382 | Pa. | 1864
The opinion of the court was delivered by
From an examination of the Acts of Assembly, to which our attention has been directed in this case, it is apparent that everything pertaining to the public schools, within the city and county of Philadelphia, has been committed to the Board of Controllers, excepting only the public purse, which has been kept carefully in the-hands of the City Councils. The Controllers have power to establish schools, to provide school-books, to make rules and regulations for the conduct of the schools, to appoint teachers, and to fix their salaries, but they have no power to raise or appropriate revenues. They were made a body politic by an Act of Assembly in 1845, and as such were capable of receiving and holding property, real and personal, but by the Consolidation Act, all their property, and trust funds of every name and description, were transferred to and vested in the city of Philadelphia, and all sums of money due or to become due to the board were to be paid ‘into the city treasury, and all sums expended by or for the purposes of the board, were to be paid by the city treasurer upon orders drawn under appropriations regularly made by Councils.
By the Act of Consolidation the'authority of the City Councils over the funds of the city was made as absolute as the separation
The legislature have thus done all they could to place the disbursement of the public funds in the same hands in which the power of taxation is lodged, and to hedge round the power of disbursement with all possible checks and guards. An appropriation in general terms “ for the support of public schools,” would leave to the city controller, city treasurer, or the controllers of the public schools, the power of appropriation to the many specific objects that combine to make up the common school system of the city, and would be too indefinite for the purposes of the Acts of 1855 and 1856. Nothing but specific objects and items will satisfy the demands of these statutes. Hence the Councils, by an ordinance of March 4th 1861, very properly itemized the appropriation for school purposes, appropriating $1500 for salary of the principal of the Normal School, and $4200 for salaries of other teachers in said school, and provided that the city controller should countersign no warrant for salaries of any teachers, except he find that a scale of salaries hud been adopted by the Controllers which should not exceed in the quarterly payments one-fourth of the aggregate in said ordinances appropriated for salaries.
We consider that ordinance a fair mode of carrying out the intent and purpose of the Acts of Assembly. Without specific appropriations, there would be great danger of wasteful expenditure. But Councils could not be expected to specify every item of expenditure in their act of appropriation. The system was too large and complex to admit of this. More than half a million of dollars were appropriated by the city to school purposes in 1861, which, besides the state appropriation, were to be applied to the construction and repair of school-houses, the pay
It follows from all this that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover, and the court should have said so. It is no matter whether she was a teacher in the Normal School or the Girls’ High School, or whether the action of the Controllers in changing the one school into the other was right or wrong. She was a teacher in the service of the city, and it was the, duty of the Controllers to fix her salary with reference to the salaries of all other teachers, so that the appropriation to teachers’ salaries would be adequate to pay every teacher, as well as herself. Until this was done, she had no right of action against the city. But if the Controllers neglected to perform their duty, she might perhaps hold them liable in damages — she might certainly have the mandamus of the courts to stir them into obedience to duty.
The judgment is reversed, and a venire facias de novo is awarded.