State Board of Agriculture v. Auditor General

180 Mich. 349 | Mich. | 1914

Ostrander, J.

(after stating the facts). In attempting to find the meaning to be given to section 1 (a.), it will be assumed that the legislature knew that, independent of the immediate appropriation, there was a fund already devoted to the needs of the college larger than any sum likely to be used to maintain the particular department. If the purpose was to limit the total sum which should be expended to maintain that department, it could not be accomplished by limiting the amount which might be taken from the immediate appropriation. If there was no purpose to limit the total amount which might be expended, the provision is wholly insensible. In any event, the words “from any and all sources” may not be disregarded. Section 1 (a) cannot be held as intended merely to place a limitation upon the amount to be taken from the immediate appropriation to be used in maintaining the mechanical and engineering department.

While no reading and no analysis of the language employed leaves one entirely certain of the meaning of the provision, it seems most reasonable to say that the purpose was to limit expenditures for maintaining the particular department to $35,000 annually, and to make unavailable for the use of the college all of its funds in case the maximum thus fixed was exceeded. I do not overlook the language, “No part of this' or any other appropriation shall be available,” nor the actual occurrence of a result which was inevitable; namely, that unless the declaration of the relator board was to be accepted for the fact some part of the immediate and of other appropriations would of necessity be available, if the college was to continue to exist, since it could not be known before the fact whether relator would or would not expend more than $35,000 in maintaining the particular department. Some question might be raised also about the meaning of the words “or any other appropriation.” The reference might be to an unexpended appropriation or the term “appropriation” used to designate, and not improperly, the earlier legislation which devoted the Federal gifts to the maintenance of the college. But I think we must say that the legislative purpose expressed in this statute is the one to which the respondent has given effect, and, assuming the law to be valid, respondent cannot be required to issue to relator further warrants for money.

We must either say this, or else conclude that section 1 (a) was added to the act as an admonition, and not a command, or a condition; that it expresses the opinion of the legislature with respect to the manner in which the agricultural college funds shall be employed. If it was an admonition merely, the act could, of course, stand without it. Because of the language employed in section 1 (a) I do not feel warranted in concluding that it is admonitory only. It is therefore necessary to determine whether the legislature has, as it is claimed, exceeded its constitutional powers, and, if it has, then the state of the applicable law.

If section 1 (a) be held to be valid, its eifect would be legislative supervision of the college. To determine that a department of the college which has been maintained at a cost of $60,000 annually for instructors and supplies -shall be from a given date maintained at a cost of $35,000 annually for instructors and supplies is to determine that it shall have fewer supplies, or fewer, or less capable, instructors, or both. It is something more than reducing a general appropriation so that the expenses in some or in all departments of the college must be reduced, leaving the proper supervisors to determine how efficiency can be best maintained under new conditions. The Constitution has given to the relator the general supervision of the college and the direction and control of all agricultural college funds. So long as the relator employs them for the purposes intended by the grant, it is beyond the power of the legislature to control the relator’s use of the funds received from the Federal government and long ago appropriated to the agricultural college. Undoubtedly the grant of funds was to the State, .and the disposition of them wholly within the power of the State, acting through its legislature, in accordance with the conditions of the trust imposed. Montana, ex rel. Haire, v. Rice, 204 U. S. 291 (27 Sup. Ct. 281); Wyoming, ex rel. Wyoming Agricultural College, v. Irvine, 206 U. S. 278 (27 Sup. Ct. 613). See, also, Massachusetts Agricultural College v. Marden, 156 Mass. 150 (30 N. E. 555). I am called upon to neither affirm nor deny the proposition that the legislature may now. appropriate the Federal fund, in whole or in part, to some other institution, withdrawing it, or some of it, from the agricultural college, so long as it keeps faith with the congress. The legislature has not withdrawn it from the college nor appropriated it, or any part of it, to another institution. It remains an agricultural college fund, within the meaning of the Constitution, devoted, under the supervision and direction of the relator, to the college and to the purposes expressed in the grant, in State legislation, and, finally, in the Constitution of the State. It is required to be “annually applied to the specific objects of the original gift, grant or appropriation.” Necessarily it must be so applied, under existing conditions, by the constitutional supervisors of the fund, and of the college, and not by the legislature. It follows that the legislature exceeded its powers in attempting to deprive the relator of its constitutional control of agricultural college funds derived from the Federal government. The constitutional powers of the State board of agriculture with respect to the college and its funds are the same as those of the board of regents of the university with respect to the university and its funds, and authority for the conclusion stated may be found in Sterling v. Regents of the University, 110 Mich. 369 (68 N. W. 253, 34 L. R. A. 150); Board of Regents v. Auditor General, 167 Mich. 444 (132 N. W. 1037), as well as in Bauer v. State Board of Agriculture, 164 Mich. 415 (129 N. W. 713).

I assume that the legislature, in amending the original bill by adding section 1 (a) thereto, acted in good faith and with the highest motives. I am obliged to find that in doing so constitutional-powers were exceeded. I am obliged to find, further, that the legislative intent was to deprive the college of all funds, however derived, upon the contingency expressed in the act. This being so, the question is whether it can be said that the act would have passed without the condition.

In deciding this question, we are not concerned with, do not inquire into, and cannot know the purpose and intent of legislators. We must look at the law itself and judicially ascertain the intent of the legislature.

“If a statute attempts to accomplish two or more objects, and is void as to one, it may still be in every respect complete and valid as to the other. But if its purpose is to accomplish a single object only, and some of its provisions are void, the whole must fail unless sufficient remains to effect the object without the aid of the invalid portion. And if they are so mutually connected with and dependent on each other, as conditions, considerations, or compensations for each other, as to warrant the belief that the legislature intended them as a whole, and if all could not be carried into effect the legislature would not pass the residue independently, then if some parts are unconstitutional, all the provisions which are thus dependent, conditional, or connected must fall with them.” Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations (6th Ed.), p. 211.

There are some facts which we may and do know which aid us in this inquiry. We know that in the year 1901, and until the year 1913, the State appropriation for the agricultural college was one-tenth of a mill. In 1913, by the act in question here, this appropriation was increased, upon condition, to one-sixth of a mill. The appropriation made in 1901 does not fail if the act of 1913 is held invalid. The college will still receive the proceeds of a tax of one-tenth of a mill upon the taxable property of the State, and it appears that upon this basis something remains in the treasury. It is contended that the decision of this court in Moreland v. Millen, 126 Mich. 381 (85 N. W. 882), supports the ruling that the act may stand, notwithstanding the invalid condition, and that to hold otherwise is to overrule the decision, in that case. I have read the opinions delivered in that case with care and with no disinclination to sustain the relator in this controversy. The cases seem to me to be wholly unlike. For the purposes of the decision in that case, it was assumed in the majority opinion that the legislature, in the act there in question, sought to improve the method of administering public works in the city of Detroit. The act made radical changes in the existing law. It provided finally that a superintendent of public works should be appointed, for a designated, but short, period of time, by the governor of the State, and thereafter by the mayor of the city. It was held that the legislature exceeded its powers in providing for the provisional appointment, but that the whole law was not thereby made invalid. It was held further that, an office having been created by the act, the mayor might proceed at once to fill it by appointment. In that case the invalid portion of the act provided for a mere detail; in this case it is the condition upon which an increased appropriation is made. It is as though the legislature, in 1913, had for that year, and each succeeding year, provided a fund for the college, and for a further sum to be given it upon condition.

The whole act must fail, and, this being so, the respondent should be advised (it is unlikely that a writ will be necessary) that the act of 1913 is void; that the act of 1901 is in force; that the fund deri/ed from the Federal government and a fund equal to the one created by that act are within the control of the relator.

McAlvay, C. J., and Brooke, Kuhn, Stone, Bird, Moore, and Steere, JJ., concurred.