268 Mo. 321 | Mo. | 1916
The question submitted to the voters was formulated by the county court in its order calling the election and was stated by it thus:
“Shall tlie county court of Pike County, Missouri, be authorized and empowered to incur an indebtedness and to issue bonds of said county of Pike to the amount of seventy-five thousand dollars for the erection of a courthouse in the city of Bowling Green, in said county of Pike, and to incur an indebtedness and to issue bonds of said county of Pike ” to the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars for the erection of a courthouse in the city of Louisiana, in said county . .
The question formulated also included, in detail, the rate of interest, times and place of payment and the power to levy a tax to pay off the bonds. The form of ballot to be used was prescribed and followed the language of that part of the order above set out. The petition and order of the county court and notice of election made it clear the courthouse proposed to be erected at Louisiana was for the occupancy of the. Louisiana Court of Common Pleas.'
At the election the question submitted received the' requisite majority of affirmative votes, and on May 24, 1916, representatives of the county presented the bonds for registration, and- this was refused. Thereupon this proceeding was begun.
Relator’s counsel do not question the existence of the rule, but seek to show the county court complied with it in framing the question it submitted to the voters.
2. Tested by the general rule, is the question submitted, to the voters of Pike County single or does it contain two separate purposes? The proceeds of the bonds were to be used for (1) a county (or circuit) courthouse at Bowling Green, and (2) for a common pleas courthouse at Louisiana. The submission combined the two. The voters could vote for both courthouses or against both court houses. No opportunity was given to vote for one and against the other. This appears from the face of the question submitted.
(a) “The will of the people, expressed by the adoption of the proposition for the borrowing or expenditure of money ... is the law of the land. The force and effect thus imparted to their will is intended. to be given to that will freely expressed. . . . Why should the force and effect of law be given to the vote adopting any proposition which has not rested wholly on its merits for the favor it has obtained at the hands of the people, but which may have been assisted to the votes it received, by other questions, with which it was so connected as that it must stand or fall with them?” [McMillan v. Lee County, 3 Iowa, l. c. 320.] “If they” (two propositions) “are submitted together . . . the' voter . . . has no liberty of choice.” [Gray v. Mount, 45 Iowa, l. c. 595.]
“Two or more questions may be submitted at a single election, provided each question may be voted on separately, so that each may stand or fall upon its own merits. But that is a very different matter from tacking two questions together to stand or fall upon a single vote. It needs no argument to show the rank injustice of such a mode of submission.” [Lewis v. Comrs., 12 Kan. l. c. 213.]
This is the doctrine approved in State ex rel. v. Wilder, 217 Mo. l. c. 270, and cases cited.
In State ex rel. v. Allen, 183 Mo. 283, a proposition was held single which contemplated the issuance of bonds by a city to purchase an old light and water plant and improve it so as to render it adequate for the city’s needs. The statute (1. c. 292) was held to warrant this and the proposition was' single in that the design was to provide the city with a single adequate plant.
In State ex rel. v. Allen, 186 Mo. 673, the question submitted proposed an issuance of bonds for the purpose of the erection and the furnishing of a city hall, city prison and hosehouse and for the repair and improvement of a water and light plant, extension < f mains, wires, etc. The court held this con
In State ex rel. v. Wilder, 200 Mo. 97, it was held that bonds might be issued for a-combined light and water plant. The court directed, if the question should be again submitted, “it should be for ‘a combined waterworks and, electric light plant.’ ”
In State ex rel. v. Wilder, 217 Mo. l. c. 269, a proposition was submitted to issue bonds to construct a sanitary sewer in one district in Joplin and a storm sewer in another district thereof. The court, unanimously, held the submission double. The case reviewed previous decisions. None of these decisions supports relator’s contention that a submission proposing to issue bonds to raise funds to build two separate courthouses, in separate cities, for different courts and for different amounts, contains but one object and is single.
In the first of these this court, Graves, Burgess and Fox, JJ., dissenting (pp. 27, 28), held unobjectionable a submission which combined propositions to bond a school district (1) to build and furnish a school house in ward one, and (2) to build an addition to a school house in ward two. In that case the court relied largely upon Hubbard v. Woodsum, supra, where the question discussed was whether the jourpose to be accomplished and 'the sum to be devoted to it could be combined in the, submission. Speaking through Lamm, J., the majority held there was a resemblance between the rule against doubleness and the constitutional provision (Sec. 28, art. 4) that “no bill shall contain more than one subject.” The court concluded the discussion of that phase of the case with this: “There can be no doubt that if the proposition we are considering was an act of the Legislature instead of a proposition voted by the people, the act would stand as against the criticism leveled at it in the case at bar. May we deal more coldly and fastidiously with the people acting as sovereigns than we do with the lawmaker moving in his orbit? If so, why?”
In State ex rel. Carrollton School District v. Gordon, 231 Mo. 547, the question submitted was as to the issuance of bonds for (1) the purchase of a site and the erection thereon of a new school building; (2) the purchase of heating plants for old school buildings; and (3) the purchase of a site and the erection thereon of a new school building for colored children. Respondent contended that submission was double, or worse, but the court, Graves and Valliant, JJ., dissenting, and Burgess-, J., not sitting, held it
While the language used is somewhat broad, it is clear the court had in mind the fact that the constitutional provision and the rule against douhleness in propositions submitted to voters in bond elections are designed to prevent “log-rolling,” the one in legislation and the other in bond elections. The purpose of each is to prevent the yoking together distinct things to the end that the two combined may attract a majority of the voters when neither, separately, might be able to do so. Without such rules the strong could he made to aid the weak, which, though commendable enough in many situations, does not always work out well in legislation and elections. The kinship between section 28 of article .4 and the rule against doubleness is little, if any, closer than stated, The two decisions negative an intent to hold that all matters which might be included in one act of the General Assembly could be included in one submission to the voters. The court recognized that the presumptions which attend the acts of the State’s general agent for legislative purposes cannot be invoked to broaden the powers of a public corporation established for stated purposes. Again, the rule as to titles if extended to submissions leaves no place for the application of any rule as to doubleness as to them. It is undeniable that under section 28 of article 4 of the Constitution, the General Assembly has power to include in a single act provisions for voting bonds, by any class of public corporations, for any and all purposes for which such corporations can be author
What the court did in the Carrollton case (which depends upon the Memphis case in large part, though explaining it) was to hold that a proposition to vote bonds in separately stated amounts for two separate sites and buildings and for heating plants for other buildings was single. The real grounds upon which this conclusion rested were stated in an effort to distinguish school districts from municipal corporations and to distinguish from other statutes the statute the court was considering. It was held (1) that a school district differed from municipal corporations in .that it had but one purpose, i. e. “to educate the children of the State;” that its corporate functions are limited to that purpose, and that “in a field so circumscribed, doubleness in propositions is not so likely to arise as in the larger and more diversified field of mu
The court attempted, finally, to put those decisions upon grounds peculiar to the law applicable to school districts. One of the difficulties which confronts us, despite the obvious effort in those decisions to restrict them to school districts, is that the very grounds upon which the distinction was attempted to be made are inconsistent with the existence of a rule against doubleness in any case unless it is introduced by the statute which authorizes bonds to be voted. The contrary is true. The purpose of the rule against doubleness in submissions being to prevent a species of fraud commonly called log-rolling, statutes ought not, in. any event, be construed to open the way for such logrolling unless they are so worded as to require that construction. The opinion in the Carroll-ton case, in part, moves on the assumption of a contrary rule of construction. Recurrence to all the cases in this State prior to the Memphis case disclose they were decided under statutes authorizing bonds to be voted for many enumerated purposes. The court, in those cases, proceeded upon the true theory, i. e. that the joint statutory enumeration of purposes did not warrant a combination in one submission of
The argument in the Carrollton case that the vote is upon the “question of loan” and that the ballots were worded by statutory direction “for the loan” or “against the loan” in some way supported the conclusion the court reached, is bereft of force by the correct rule stated in the Memphis case (223 Mo. l. c. 19), which is that the purpose of the issuance of bonds in all cases “necessarily . . . becomes an integral element” (of the proposition submitted) “in order to make the proposition intelligible and carry information to the voter.”
In the Memphis case (223 Mo. l. c. 20), another suggestion was that, in some way, bonds previously negotiated might be affected-. There is no ground for such apprehension. The right to question the validity of bonds on the ground of irregularities in proceedings preliminary to their issuance ends with the negotiation of the bonds. Where the power to vote the bonds is absent the rule is different. Such is the gen
In addition to what has already been written the dissenting opinion of Craves, J., in the Memphis case (223 Mo. l. c. 27 et seq.), contains a further review of the principal opinion in that case which clearly points out the unsoundness thereof.
We are unable to distinguish the Memphis and Carrollton cases on principle, and the efforts made in the Carrollton case to distinguish them fails when it is examined in the light of the principle whose existence is conceded. In these circumstances those cases must be and are overruled.
discussion of the notice given of the election. Compliance .with the statute as construed by this court (State ex rel. v. Gordon, 242 Mo. 615) is not difficult. In that case a form of notice, from heading to signature, was set out and approved by this court in Banc.
The alternative writ is quashed.