Case ID: ohio-st_49/html/0586-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the CoueT :", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Metcalf, Auditor v. State, ex rel.
    
      Constitutional law — Municipal corporations.
    
    An act of the general assembly, that merely detaches from a municipal corporation part of its territory and attaches it to an'adjoining township, does not confer corporate power, nor contravene any other provision of the constitution of 1851.
    (Decided October 11, 1892.)
    ERROR to the Circuit Court of Hancock county.
    Prior to the year 1887, portions of territory that composed the townships of Marion and Tiberty, in Hancock county, were detached from those townships, united and organized into the township of Findlay, in which the village of Find-lay was located. Afterwards, in the year 1887, by proceedings had before the county commissioners of Hancock county, the incorporated limits of the city (then village) of Findlay were extended and made identical with the boundaries of the township of Findlay. A large proportion of the territory thus added to the city was agricultural lands not then or since laid out or divided into town or city lots. Many of the land owners remonstrated against and contested before the county commissioners, and the courts of the state the annexation, but were defeated, and the annexation proceedings completed and declared regular. Afterwards application was made to the general assembly for relief, and in 1890 an act was passed by the legislature detaching from both the city and township of Findlay and attaching to the originál townships from which it had been taken, portions of the agricultural territory that had been annexed by the proceedings had before the county commissioners. 87 Ohio E., 553. The city of Findlay, denying the power of the general assembly to pass the detaching act, and insisting that the law was unconstitutional and void, sought to have the plaintiff in error, who was auditor of Hancock county, place upon the detached lands, the taxes it had levied for municipal purposes, and upon his refusal brought in the circuit court of Hancock' county, an action in mandamus to compel him to do'so. The circuit court holding the law to be unconstitutional, awarded a peremptory writ of mandamus directing the plaintiff in error as auditor of Hancock county to place the municipal tax upon the detached lands; whereupon proceedings were instituted in this court to obtain a reversal of the judgment of the circuit court.
    
      H F. Burkett, Prosecuting Attorney, Henry Brown and Beecher W. Waltermire, for plaintiff in error.
    
      W. F. Duncan, City Solicitor, and Thomas E. Duncan, for defendant in error.
   By the CoueT :

By the constitution of this state all legislative power is vested in the general assembly. Sec. Í, art. 2. The power to detach territory from a municipal corporation is in its nature legislative rather than executive or judicial, and unless forbidden by the constitution it may be exercised by the general assembly. That provision of the constitution which forbids the general assembly to confer by special legislation corporate power does not apply, for the legislature in simply detaching territory from a municipal corporation does not confer corporate power; the subject of the act is local, and, although there may be a general law providing a method by which territory within a municipal corporation may be detached from it and added to an adjoining township, yet it may be done by a special act of the legislature, without infringing section 26 of article 2 of the constitution, which provides for the uniform operation of all general laws. State ex rel. Attorney General v. Shearer, 46 Ohio St., 275. Nor has the act any retrospective operation. The territory continued to be a part of the municipality from the time of its annexation until the detaching act went into effect, which was from its passage. Neither does it impair the obligations of any contract entered into by the city of Findlay, for, from aught that the record discloses, that municipality is, notwithstanding this loss of territory, amply able to meet all of its outstanding obligations. No other grounds of its unconstitutionality than the foregoing are-suggested in argument, and we discover none ourselves.

Judgment Reversed and petition dismissed.