147 Ga. 480 | Ga. | 1917
The commissioners of roads and revenues of Stewart County, on complaint of certain citizens of the county, filed a petition with the prison commission of Georgia for the discharge of the warden in charge of the convicts in that county. They employed attorneys at law to represent them, before the prison commission, the attorney regularly retained by the commissioners of roads and revenues having refused to do so; and this action, by certain other citizens and taxpayers of Stewart county, is to enjoin the payment of the fee and expenses of the attorneys incurred in that service. The judge of the superior court denied the interlocutory injunction.
The facts are not in dispute. The commissioners of roads and revenues of Stewart county employ the convicts, State and county, in the working of the public roads of the county. The prison commission of Georgia has the exclusive power, under the law, to appoint and remove the warden. The petition before the learned judge below authorized him to find that the grounds of complaint made against the warden were substantial and not merely frivolous, and that the petition for his removal was made in good faith. Whether the evidence submitted to the prison commission' sustained the charges against the warden does not appear. The expenses incurred by counsel and the fee charged for the services rendered by them are not alleged to be unreasonable or excessive. The citizens and taxpayers are proper parties to the cause, and the whole question is: Have the commissioners of roads and revenues the authority to bind the county by the contract with the attorneys and to pay them the fee and expenses?
“The General Assembly shall not have power to delegate to any county the right to levy a tax for any purpose, except for educational purposes . . ; to build and repair the public buildings and bridges; to maintain and support prisoners; to pay jurors and coroners, and for litigation, quarantine, roads, and expenses of courts; to support paupers and pay debts heretofore existing; to pay the county police, and. to provide for necessary sanitation.” Constitution of Georgia, art. 7, sec. 6, par. 2 (Civil Code, § 6562).
Nor can it be said that the proceeding before the prison commission for the removal of the warden was road building, or the exercise of a power incident to road building, in any proper sense of that term. Many things mediately and remotely connécted with road building, and more or less conducive to the proper building of public roads, are nevertheless not such “building or repairing of the public roads” as to authorize a county to expend the public funds therefor.
Within the enumerated purposes of the constitutional provision . quoted above, a large discretion in the expenditure of public money is necessarily vested in the officers of the county who have charge of its affairs; but the public-road funds of the county can only be disbursed by such authorities for the specific purposes for which the taxes were levied. We are forced to conclude that the proceeding before the prison commission, instituted by a majority of the county commissioners, was not “litigation” in which the county, in its corporate capacity, was interested; nor" was it road building, or the exercise of a power incident thereto, within the meaning of the constitution and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, conferring upon counties the right to levy taxes for the purpose of building or repairing public roads. Compare DeVaughn v. Booten, 146 Ga. 836 (92 S. E. 629).
Judgment reversed.