63 So. 985 | Ala. | 1913
— In the Code of 1876 — see section 5025 of the Code of 1876 — -the Legislature declared that “all persons who are entitled to have an allowance made by the court of county commissioners for services commonly designated as ex officio services, for which no specific compensation is provided, shall, before such allowance is made, itemize the services for which pay is claimed, and make oath thereto as is required to be made in the allowance of ordinary claims against the county; and the compensation allowed shall not exceed the fair and reasonable value of the services, but in no cáse shall it exceed the maximum allowed by law for such services.” At that time, in the fee bill of probate judges, two items appeared which came directly within the above legislative definition of “ex officio” services. One of those items was for services with reference to public roads, for which he was allowed to receive a sum not exceeding $90 per annum, and the other was for all other services for which no specific compen
The public road system of our counties is a creature of our statutes, and for a long period of years our Legislatures have annexed to the offices of probate judge and sheriff certain duties relative to public roads. As the incumbents of those offices are required by our statutes to perform — in lieu of a public road superintendent or supervisor — these extra duties so attached to their offices, the Legislature has seen fit to provide a method of compensating them for the services so required of them. Originally the amount of this compensation was fixed at the precise sum of $90 per annum for each in
A painstaking examination of the history of our statutes governing the subject of compensation to public officials convinces us that it has been the policy of our lawmakers to fix the precise amount of each fee to which an officer is entitled unless that fee is, in reality, an allowance for mere ex officio services, or services which the law annexes to a particular office and requires the incumbent of that office to perform. The law of fees and costs is penal aud must be strictly construed. —Mobile County v. Price Williams, Jr., 180 Ala. 639, 61 South. 963. Our lawmakers have recognized the above legal truism, and have, as a general rule, fixed a definite fee for every specific, well-defined duty required of an officer, leaving only under certain fixed limitations a discretion in the county commissioners as to what shall be paid to an incumbent of an office for mere ex officio services which the law has attached to his office. The law has not, at times, defined with chiseled accuracy where the powers which come within the general and natural purview of an office end and where the duties which, as mere ex officio duties, are attached to such office begin; but, when we take into consideration the general policy of our lawmakers to fix, as already stated, a definite fee for each service not merely ex officio, and to leave, in cases of officers whose duties are confined to the limits of a particular county, in courts of county commissioners or boards of revenue, a discretion, within defined limits, as to what shall annually be paid to
As the compensation of a probate judge for services with reference to public roads is, under the terms of our statute permitting it, an allowance by the court of county commissioners to a county officer, and as, in our opinion, this sendee has always been by our Legislature and, as to that matter,'by our probate judges and by our people themselves, regarded as a mere ex officio service, it seems to us that under the above-quoted section of our Constitution the Legislature has the power to authorize the court of county commissioners to allow a probate judge now holding office, as compensation for services rendered by him to the public roads of his county, a greater sum than the law authorized such court to allow such probate judge for such services when
1. When M. B. Abercrombie was elected to and was inducted into the office of judge of probate of Macon county, section 3720 of the Code provided that “for discharging his duties in relation to public roads, on proof to the court of county commissioners that he has discharged such duties, annually, to be paid out of the county treasury, the probate judge shall be paid not exceeding ninety dollars.” By an act approved April 1, 1911 (Pamph. Gen. Acts 1911, pp. 154-158), the above section of the Code was amended so as to increase the limit of said allowance beyond which the court of county commissioners cannot go to $400. In other words, the said section of the Code was so amended by the said act as to strike the word “ninety” from section 3720 of the Code, where it appears in said section and in lieu thereof substitute the words, “four hundred.”
There is nothing in the act which indicates that the Legislature did not- intend that the act should not take effect immediately upon its passage. The passage of the act was a legislative declaration that it regarded
We are therefore of the opinion that the allowance to Judge Abercrombie was authorized by a statute of this state, which the Legislature had the power to enact, into law and to put into immediate effect. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed, and a judgment is here rendered, affirming the judgment of the circuit court of Macon county.
Reversed and rendered.