285 N.E.2d 80 | Ohio Ct. App. | 1972
Lead Opinion
Sections 198-1 and 198-2 of the charter of the city of Cleveland, hereinafter referred to as the "charter amendments" or "amendments," were adopted by the people of Cleveland on May 7, 1968. Section 198-1, dealing with the annual rate of pay for members of the fire department, was placed on the ballot by initiative petition while Section 198-2, dealing with the annual rate of pay for the *238 police department, was submitted to the electorate by city council's enactment of ordinance No. 547-68.
In substance the two amendments are identical. They provide that the council of the city of Cleveland shall once a year between January 1 and February 15 survey the base rates then paid first grade firemen and policemen in other Ohio cities of 50,000 population or more, and shall no later than June 1 provide compensation by ordinance for police and firemen of first grade at a rate three percent (3%) higher than the highest rate paid of first grade in any city of Ohio with a population of 50,000 or more. In addition such pay ordinance shall include a sixteen percent (16%) differential between the ranks in the police and fire departments.
This case is on appeal from the Court of Common Pleas' denial of plaintiff's request for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief in which the validity of the charter amendments was sustained.
The thrust of this appeal centers on the issue of whether or not the charter amendments calling for the police and fire departments of the city of Cleveland to be paid three percent (3%) higher than any other municipality in the state of Ohio of 50,000 population or more is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority. The wisdom of the amendments is notinvolved in determining the legal issues.
We find nothing in the Ohio Constitution which establishes the unconstitutionality of the charter amendments. The charter of a city is the "organic law" by which the people of a municipality are to be governed. So long as the organic law of the city is amended limiting the exercise of the legislative power of the local city council and the initiative power of the city's electorate, it is constitutional.
It is noteworthy that in a similar case the issue of delegation of legislative authority was resolved by the state of California in Kugler v. Yocum (1968),
"In the instant case, the adoption of the proposed ordinance * * * will constitute the legislative body's resolution of the `fundamental issue.' Once the legislative body has determined the issue of policy * * * the subsequent filling in of the facts in application and execution of the policy does not constitute delegation. Thus the decision on the legislative policy has not been delegated; the implementation of the policy by reference to Los Angeles salaries is not the delegation of it."
The dissenting opinion doubted the constitutionality of the provision because it was to be accomplished by an initiative ordinance. However, the dissent went on to state that if the people adopted such a plan by charter amendment then "there would be no question of unlawful delegation of legislative authority."
While it is unconstitutional for the city to delegate its power to make a law, it can make a law to delegate a power to determine some fact upon which that law shall depend. The citizens of Cleveland, through their charter, have chosen the way in which their police and firemen will be paid. The fact is, having determined the fundamental issue, they delegated nothing. No other community in Ohio of a population of 50,000 or more is asked to legislate for Cleveland. The Cleveland city council in implementing the charter amendments has been given standards to use in determining the wages of police and firemen. They look to other Ohio cities of 50,000 population or more to obtain statistical data only. The primary concern over standards is to protect the public by safeguards against arbitrary actions. SeeKugler v. Yocum, supra. Here, the formula contained in the amendments is exact because it provides that no later than the 15th day of February in each year, the Cleveland city council shall survey and certify the rates paid to employees of all Ohio cities of 50,000 population or over, and shall by the 1st of June of each year compensate Cleveland's police and firemen at a rate three percent (3%) higher than any other surveyed Ohio city. The *240 amendments, therefore, contain the essential safeguards vital to the protection against arbitrary actions by those assigned the duty to compute the wages.
There is nothing unique about the problem presented in this case. Analogous law exists in Ohio's "prevailing wage law" (R. C.
Judgment affirmed.
SILBERT, J., concurs.
Dissenting Opinion
With deference, I dissent. My reasons are elaborated below:
These charter amendments are substantially alike. One, Section 198-1, establishes the annual rate of pay for members of the fire department, and the other, Section 198-2, establishes the annual rate of pay for members of the police department. In their essential terms Sections 198-1 and 198-2 provide for a city council survey of base rates for first grade firemen and patrolmen, respectively, once each year between January 1 and February 15. The survey is carried out in Ohio cities, other than Cleveland, with populations of 50,000 or more. Thereafter, the amendments require that once each year, not later than June 1, city council shall provide by ordinance that firemen and patrolmen of the first grade in the employ of the city of Cleveland shall receive a base rate three percent higher than that paid by such other Ohio cities to their firemen and policemen of the first grade at the time of the counciliar survey. In addition the ordinances establishing the base rates as described shall provide for base rate differentials of sixteen percent between each of the ranks within the fire and police departments.
Hereafter the Sections 198-1 and 198-2 shall be referred to as the "charter amendments" or the "amendments" and will be treated together because each issue raised as to one is applicable to the other. For the sake of simplicity, the parties, including the substituted appellant (see fn. 1), and defendants appellees, the city of Cleveland, certain of its officials and intervening members of the division of fire, city of Cleveland, will be designated "plaintiff" *242 and "defendants," or "defendant city," and "defendant city officials" or "defendant intervenors," respectively.
The defendants, on the other hand, reduce the issue to the single question:
"Did the people of the city of Cleveland violate any provision of the United States or state Constitutions by amendment of their charter and enacting Sections 198-1 and 198-2 relating to the computation of wages to be paid to policemen and firemen?"
I take a view of the issue or issues which makes it unnecessary to reach federal constitutional questions and permits even further condensation. In my view the singular question is:
"Was the enactment of Sections 198-1 and 198-2 of the Cleveland city charter by the electorate of Cleveland a delegation of legislative power prohibited by the Constitution of the state of Ohio."2
I would answer the question affirmatively and reverse. *243
It is this delegation of power to cities other than Cleveland upon which the constitutional question in this case pivots. A classic Ohio statement of the distinction between legal and illegal delegations of power appears in Cincinnati W. Z. R. R.Co. v. Clinton County Comm'rs. (1852),
"The true distinction * * * is between the delegation of power to make the law, which necessarily involves a discretion as to what it shall be, and conferring an authority or discretion as to its execution, to be exercised under and in pursuance ofthe law. The first cannot be done; to the latter no valid objection can be made." (Emphasis added.)4 *245
Classical or not the statement of the valid delegation principle in the Clinton case does not throw much light on the constitutional status of a particular delegation of authority unless, and until, there is a supply of detail either in the delegation from the legislature itself, or from the executive, or through judicial explication. While the general rule is that no delegation of legislative power to make the law is valid, it is clear that every regulatory statute involves some exercise of guided power to implement by the agency with responsibility for effectuating the policy of the law. The distinction between power to legislate and power to implement is only the beginning. The difficult issues arise when the method5 the legislative authority adopts to implement its policy raises the question whether the power to legislate rather than the power to implement has been delegated.
It had been said that the reasons for delegating power "can be compassed by" the single generalization:
"Power should be delegated where there is agreement that a task must be performed and it cannot be effectively performed by the legislature without the assistance of a delegate or without an expenditure of time so great as to lead to the neglect of equally important business. Delegation is most commonly indicated where the relations to be regulated are highly technical or where their regulation requires a course of continuous decision."6 *246
The delegation in issue in the present case might survive such tests of the necessity to delegate. For example, the problem of an analysis of all wage actions in Ohio municipalities of more than 50,000 population other than Cleveland might very well make unsupportable demands on counciliar time. However, these test points need not be reached in order to decide this case. For another crucial element to valid delegation islegislative control of the delegated power. And that is the crucial question here. Can power to make the law7 be said to have been retained within the constitutional local self-government allowed Cleveland when an irresistible condition (whose coming into existence depends wholly upon the future acts of non-Cleveland legislative bodies) will require a pay raise? Can that result be constitutionally achieved even by charter? Stated another way, may a power to implement, legitimate under the Ohio Constitution if passed to controlled administrative delegates of the city of Cleveland in accordance with specified standards or conditions, be equally legitimate if conferred on another, or several other, uncontrollable legislative councils whose acts will ineluctably require a Cleveland raise?8 This is the issue underlying the constitutional question which animates this case. *247
It has been pointed out that the need in legislative delegations is not so much for standards as safeguards againstarbitrariness. When power leaves legislative hands, standards are but one way of implementing control. See Davis, 1 Administrative Law Treatise, Section 2.15 (1958). There are no such safeguards in the instant case.
It is an evident proposition that the Cleveland charter, with its amendments, is a creature of the Ohio Consitution and must conform to it.9 In determining conformance, a court is duty bound to reconcile the charter and the Constitution if it can. In my view this duty to reconcile is exactly analogous to the duty to reconcile a statute and the higher authority of the Constitution, Belden v. U. C. L. Ins. Co. (1944),
Reconciliation in this instance is attempted, of course, on the assumption that the amendments bear the same presumption of validity afforded statutes or ordinances, see Cincinnati W. Z.R. R. Co. v. Clinton County *248 Comm'rs., supra, 82; Reutener v. Cleveland (1923),
A threshold consideration in the reconciliation process is cradled by the fact that the surrender is by charter amendment
and the charter is the "Constitution of Cleveland" for local government purposes with all the inflexibility that constitutional status implies for the effect on council's power. That is, council cannot act contrary to the amendments. In the present instance it is, in effect paralyzed by the amendments to its organic document, the fundamental law, the municipal constitution, see Adams et al. v. Wolff (1948),
This analysis reveals the unbridled nature of the delegation of power. A key distinction between ordinance and charter wage determinations highlights constitutional considerations because of the difference in counciliar control. To illustrate, under the Cleveland charter even an initiated ordinance can be repealed by an ordinance simply passed *249 by council, Chapter 7, Section 58, Cleveland City Charter, but acharter provision cannot.11 Amendment of the latter involves a longer, more indirect, more expensive, and less predictable control.12
The Ohio cases, so far as my research reveals, have not dealt with delegations of power in the exact context in which it arises in the instant case. In this state the traditional "standards" language is often used to describe the principle that legislative policy setting, coupled with contingency fact finding or the filling in of details by a delegate *250
to implement the legislative policy, accomplishes constitutional delegation. Cf. Cincinnati W. Z. R. R. Co. v. Clinton CountyCommrs., supra, 88-89; Matz v. Curtis Cartage Co. (1937),
In my view, therefore this case presents an even stronger case than Piskura for the proposition that the delegation is unconstitutionally placed.
Despite the flat statement in the appellee's brief that the principle involved in the present case "is precisely the same as that employed in Ohio's `Prevailing Wage Law' [and] such law was approved in Strain v. Southerton (1948),
The Strain case upheld the constitutionality of state minimum wage legislation15 and found no unconstitutional *251
delegation of legislative power where the statute simply set general guidelines and did not require unwaivering allegiance to any particular wage set by an agency not within the control of the statutory delegate. The statutory sections in question were 154-45 d, e, f, g, h, i, j, m, n, and p of the Ohio General Code. These sections were the predecessors of R. C.
"* * * In establishing a minimum fair wage for any service or class of service under this article, the director,superintendent or the wage board without being bound by any technical rules of evidence or procedure (1) may take into account all relevant circumstances affecting the value of the service or class of service rendered, and (2) may be guided by like considerations as would guide a court in a suit for the reasonable value of services rendered where services are rendered at the request of an employer without contract as to the amount of the wage to be paid, and (3) may consider the wages paid in the state for work of like or comparable character by employers who voluntarily maintain minimum fair wage standards * * *." Strain v. Southerton, id. at 156-157. (Emphasis supplied.)
Thus, from the statutory directions it is clear that the state's agents, whom it controls, are advised how to proceed in implementing policy but no outside entity (as, for example, any state in the United States bearing a specified population) can act in a way to compel Ohio to conform to wage standards it does not legislate. This is the heart of the matter.
I arrive at these conclusions without assessing the wisdom of the charter device involved here. That device, by reciprocal ratchetting of wage increases between Cleveland employees and those of any other Ohio city with 50,000 or *252 more population and a comparable wage scheme, would fuel automatic wage increases ad infinitum.
I would reverse as contrary to law and remand to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Section 3: [Powers.]
Municipalities shall have authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws. (Adopted September 3, 1912.)
Section 7: [Home rule.]
Any municipality may frame and adopt or amend a charter for its government and may, subject to the provisions of section 3 of this article, exercise thereunder all powers of local self-government. (Adopted September 3, 1912.)
"Although Section 3 of Article XVIII of the Constitution limits the authority of municipalities to adopt and enforce `police, sanitary and other similar regulations' to such `as are not in conflict with general laws' there is no such limitation with respect to the `authority to exercise all powers of local self-government,' which is provided for in Sections 3 and 7 of that Article." The State, ex rel. Bindas, v. Andris (1956),