149 So. 837 | Ala. | 1933
Petitioner is chief deputy sheriff of Walker county, and seeks by this proceeding the payment of his salary as fixed by a local law (Loc. Acts 1923, p. 319) at the sum of $1,800 per annum, payable in equal monthly installments out of the county treasury. Such is the entire substance of the local law, and the matter of its constitutional validity lies at the threshold of petitioner's case. *336
The act is here assailed by respondent as violative of section 105 of our present Constitution, and petitioner, expressly waiving any question concerning the formality of its presentment, invites a ruling on the constitutional validity of this local law.
Counsel for petitioner conceives that the question is foreclosed, favorably to the validity of the act, by the cases of Court of County Commissioners v. Lightner,
Aside from the fact that in those cases the effect of the local acts was to create the office of deputy sheriff for those separate divisions of the court (Brandon v. Askew,
"10188. Deputies — In all counties of the State of Alabama which now have not more than two hundred thousand inhabitants according to the last federal census or which may hereafter have such population according to any federal census hereafter taken, in which the sheriff is not on a salary basis under and by virtue of a constitutional amendment, the sheriff of such county must have one chief deputy, and may have as many other deputies as he may think proper, but the coroner of such county shall not be appointed a deputy. Said chief deputy shall be appointed by the sheriff of the county to hold office at the pleasure of the sheriff, and for his services shall receive a salary of such amount as may be fixed by the court of county commissioners, board of revenue or other governing body of the county in which such chief deputy is appointed not less than nine hundred and not more than fifteen hundred dollars, payable in twelve equal monthly installments out of the treasury of the county upon the warrant of the board of revenue or court of county commissioners of such county."
At the time, therefore, of the passage of the local law upon which petitioner rests his case, there was this general law making provision for the salary of the chief deputy to be fixed by the governing body of the county at not less than $900, nor more than $1,500 per annum, payable in twelve equal monthly installments out of the treasury of the county. The local act relates to the same subject-matter, the salary of the chief deputy of Walker county; the only detail change being in the amount as fixed at $1,800, rather than the maximum of $1,500 as provided by the general law.
In principle the case of Acuff v. Weaver,
If the Acuff Case, supra, is to be here followed, the result must be a condemnation of the local act of 1923, as violative of section 105 of our Constitution.
Pretermitting all other questions, the denial of the writ may well rest upon the invalidity of the act, upon which petitioner relies for relief.
Let the judgment be affirmed.
Affirmed.
ANDERSON, C. J., and THOMAS, BROWN, FOSTER, and KNIGHT, JJ., concur.
BOULDIN, J., dissents on the authority of the case of Dunn v. Dean,