41 Cal. 525 | Cal. | 1871
This is an application for a mandamus, to compel the Auditor of the City and County of San Francisco to issue his warrant on the General Fund of said city and county for the several amounts found to be due to the relators respectively, by the County Judge, in accordance with the provisions of the Act of March 4th, 1870. (Stats. 1869-70, p. 146.) The appli
The argument, by which it is sought to impeach the validity of the Act is, that when the Commissioners were appointed, and rendered the services for which they now seek compensation, the city and county were not, and are not, under any legal or moral obligation to pay for such service, inasmuch as the Act of April 4th, 1864, under which the proceedings for extending the streets were commenced, expressly provides that the entire expense of the work shall be defrayed by assessments on the property benefited by the improvement. It is insisted that the Commissioners accepted their employment, and performed the service, with full knowledge that their services were to be paid for in this method, and not otherwise, and hence that the city and county were under neither legal nor moral obligation to pay for them; and it is denied that the Legislature has the power, under the Constitution, to appropriate the funds of a municipal corporation towards the liquidation of a demand, which the corporation was not under even a moral obligation to pay. It is said that the funds in the treasury of the corporation were raised by taxation, for municipal purposes only, and can be applied to no other; and that to apply them in satisfaction of a demand, which the corporation was not bound, in good conscience, to pay, would be to appropriate them to a purely private purpose, having no connection whatever with municipal affairs; and the power of the Leg islaturc to do this is denied.
But few branches of jurisprudence have been more fully discussed by American Courts than the extent to which municipal corporations and their property are subject to leg
It remains only to inquire whether the appropriation in this case was for a municipal or for a purely private purpose. The work in respect to which the services of the Commissioners were rendered was clearly one of great public importance. It related to the extension of the principal street of the city; and the enterprise was set on foot and ordered to be carried forward by the Board of Supervisors, The
In this case all that the Legislature has attempted to do is to compel the city and county to advance, out of its treasury, a small portion of the cost of opening one of its chief thoroughfares until the amount shall be reimbursed by means of assessments on the property to be principally benefited, and I think the Act is clearly constitutional.
It is'therefore ordered that the writ issue as prayed for.
Rhodes, G. J., and Temple, J., concurring:
We concur in the judgment.