Case ID: so2d_886/html/0067-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "HOUSTON, Justice. HARWOOD, Justice", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Doyle HAMMONDS v. TOWN OF PRICEVILLE.
    1021637.
    Supreme Court of Alabama.
    Dec. 12, 2003.
    Rehearing Denied Feb. 27, 2004.
    
      Gregory A. Reeves of Edwards, Mitchell & Reeves, Decatur, for appellant.
    L. Ann Grace and Gary K. Grace of Grace, Evans & Matthews, Huntsville, for appellee.
   HOUSTON, Justice.

Doyle Hammonds appeals from a summary judgment entered by the Morgan Circuit Court in favor of the Town of Prieeville. We reverse and remand.

Hammonds became Priceville’s chief of police in 1980. In May 2000, two former girlfriends brought harassment charges against Hammonds. On October 15, 2001, he pleaded guilty to two counts of “harassing communications.” On November 15, 2001, Priceville’s town council convened a hearing to discuss Hammonds’s situation. At the conclusion of that hearing, the council voted 4-2 to remove Hammonds as chief of police. The mayor’s vote was one of the four votes in favor of Hammonds’s removal. Hammonds was subsequently removed as chief of police.

Hammonds petitioned the trial court for a common-law writ of certiorari to review his removal. The trial court granted the petition and subsequently entered a summary judgment for the Town of Prieeville. Hammonds appeals.

Standard of Review

A municipal employee has no statutory right to appeal from a town council’s decision to terminate the worker’s employment. Because a terminated municipal employee has no such right, a petition for a common-law writ of certiorari is the proper method for having the trial court review the council’s decision. Evans v. City of Huntsville, 580 So.2d 1323, 1325 (Ala.1991). Our review of a summary judgment is de novo. DecisionQuest, Inc. v. Hayes, 863 So.2d 90, 94 (Ala.2003). Because the facts here are undisputed, our analysis is limited to determining whether the Town of Prieeville is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. Rule 56(c), Ala. R. Civ. P.

Analysis

This case concerns the construction of two statutes. Ala.Code 1975, § 11-43-2 states, in pertinent part:

“In all cities and towns having a population of less than 12,000 inhabitants ..., the legislative functions shall be exercised by the mayor and five aider-men. The mayor shall preside over all deliberations of the council. At his discretion, he may vote as a member of the council on any question coming to a vote, except in ease of a tie, in which event he must vote.”

It is undisputed that Priceville has less than 12,000 inhabitants and that it thus falls within this statutory provision.

Ala.Code 1975, § 11-43-160 provides, in pertinent part: “The city council may remove, by a two-thirds vote of all those elected to the council, any [person appointed to office in the city].” Hammonds contends that the mayor’s voting on his removal violated the provision of § 11-43-160 that requires those voting on his removal to be “elected to the council.” He argues that the mayor presides over the council, votes with the council at times, but is not “elected to” that council.

When the language of a statute is clear and unambiguous, we must enforce the statute as written, thus giving effect to its plain meaning. Ex parte Pfizer, Inc., 746 So.2d 960, 964 (Ala.1999); DeKalb County LP Gas Co. v. Suburban Gas, Inc., 729 So.2d 270, 275 (Ala.1998). However, if the language of a statute is ambiguous or if one statute conflicts with another, we must apply principles of statutory construction to determine the meaning of the statute. One such principle provides that statutes dealing with the same subject matter are to be construed in pari mate-ria. Tucker v. Molden, 761 So.2d 996, 998 (Ala.2000); Tuders v. Kell, 739 So.2d 1069, 1072 (Ala.1999); DeKalb County LP Gas, 729 So.2d at 276. Our constitution, statutes, and caselaw provide no guidance as to what are the “legislative functions” of a municipality and as to whether removal of a municipal officer is legislative or administrative in nature. Because the removal of a municipal officer could be a legislative function, and because § 11-43-2 entitles the mayor to exercise “legislative functions” along with the council, we see an apparent conflict between § 11-43-2 and § 11-43-160, which provides that a municipal officer may be removed only by a two-thirds vote of “those elected to the council.”

Section 11-43-2 states the broad principle that the mayor “may vote as a member of the council on any question coming to a vote.” We hold that § 11-43-160, when read in pari materia with § 11-43-2, provides an exception to this broad principle. The exception concerns not who may vote, but whose vote will actually count in removing a person appointed to office in the municipality. The statute allows removal “by a two-thirds vote of all those elected to the council” (emphasis added). Mayors are “elected to” the office of mayor, not “to the council.” Therefore, a mayor is fully entitled to vote to remove a municipal official, but the mayor’s vote does not count in determining if there was the requisite “two-thirds vote of all those elected to the council” to remove the official.

Had the Legislature not intended to limit the vote on removal of a municipal officer to “those elected to the council,” it would not have explicitly so stated. However, “it is not our place to engage in such a guessing game.” DeKalb County LP Gas, 729 So.2d at 277. Rather, it is our job to say what the law is, not what it should be. Ex parte Pfizer, Inc., 746 So.2d at 964; DeKalb County LP Gas, 729 So.2d at 276. “Words do have a limited range of meaning, and no interpretation that goes beyond that range is permissible.” Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation 24 (Amy Gutmann, ed., Princeton University Press 1997).

Because the mayor was not “elected to the council,” his vote was technically allowed on the question of removing Ham-monds as police chief; however, his vote was irrelevant. For that reason, the town council did not have the requisite two-thirds vote needed to remove Hammonds from the office of chief of police; therefore, Hammonds was not properly removed from that office, and the trial court erred in entering a summary judgment for the Town of Priceville. We hereby reverse the trial court’s judgment and remand the cause for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

SEE, LYONS, BROWN, and JOHNSTONE, JJ., concur.

HARWOOD, WOODALL, and STUART, JJ., dissent.

HARWOOD, Justice

(dissenting).

I respectfully dissent. Ala.Code 1975, § 11-43-160, states in full:

“Any person appointed to office in any city or town may, for cause, after a hearing, be removed by the officer making the appointment.
“The city council may remove, by a two-thirds vote of all those elected to the council, any such person in the several departments for incompetency, malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance in office and for conduct detrimental to good order or discipline, including habitual neglect of duty.”

(Emphasis supplied.)

The second paragraph of Ala.Code 1975, § 11^3-2, provides:

“In all cities and towns having a population of less than 12,000 inhabitants according to the last or any subsequent 'federal census, the legislative functions shall be exercised by the mayor and five aldermen. The mayor shall preside over all deliberations of the council. At his discretion he may vote as a member of the council on any question coming to a vote, except in case of a tie, in which event he must vote.”

(Emphasis supplied.)

Ala.Code 1975, § 11-40-6, provides in its first paragraph:

“Municipal corporations now existing or hereafter organized under this title containing 2,000 or more inhabitants shall be called cities. All incorporated municipalities containing less than 2,000 inhabitants shall be called towns. The last census, whether federal or taken as authorized in this title, shall be used in determining the population of a city or town.”

The population of the Town of Priceville, according to the last federal census, conducted in the year 2000, was only 1,631. Therefore, although Priceville qualifies as a “town” (as apparently recognized by its name, “Town of Priceville”), it does not qualify as a city. Ala.Code 1975, § 11-40-1 (included in the Alabama Code of 1907) provides, in pertinent part:

“All municipal organizations now existing in the state of Alabama ... and all towns and cities that may hereafter be incorporated under the provisions of this title shall be bodies politic and corporate ... having perpetual succession under the name now used or hereafter assumed as provided in this title, and each under such name as the ‘City of .’ or ‘Town of.,’ as the case may be...

(Emphasis supplied.) The “title” referred to in § 11-40-1 is Title 11 of the Code (“Counties and Municipal Corporations”), and all of the Code sections cited in this dissent are included in that title.

The previously quoted second paragraph of § 11-43-2 specifically refers to “all cities and towns” having a population of less than 12,000. Thus § 11-48-2 is applicable to the Town of Priceville, requiring that the legislative functions of the town be exercised “by the mayor and five aider-men” and that the mayor “may vote as a member of the council on any question coming to a vote” and must vote “in ease of a tie.” (Emphasis supplied.)

Section 11-43-160 specifies in its first sentence that any appointee to a municipal office “in any city or town” may be removed, for cause, by the officer who made the appointment. The second sentence, being also a new paragraph, pertains to the removal of municipal appointees for any of several named categories of cause. In stating who may exercise that removal power, it restricts the power to the “city council,” choosing not to use a term such as “city or town council.” Thus, I conclude that the second paragraph of § 11 — 43-160 has no application to removal by a town of an appointee to a town office. It deals only with a removal by the city council. Therefore, by process of elimination, the only statutory provision applicable to the situation here, with the exception of the first paragraph of § 11-43-160 (at least insofar as the parties have directed our attention to any applicable Code sections) is the second paragraph of § 11 — 13-2. Under it, the mayor may vote “as a member of the council on any question coming to a vote” and must vote in the case of a tie. That broad provision clearly authorizes the mayor of the Town of Priceville to vote, as he did in this case, and for his vote to be counted “as a member of the council.”

Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that the reference in the second paragraph of § 11-43-160 to “[t]he city council” should be read expansively so as to embrace a “town council,” that provision requires “a two-thirds vote of all those elected to the council.” (Emphasis supplied.) The second paragraph § 11-43-2 mandates that the legislative functions of any city or town having a population of less than 12,000 “shall be exercised by the mayor and five alderman”; however, if the mayor’s vote is discounted, there could never be a situation where an exact “two-thirds vote” could occur. Rather, four out of the five council persons (a four-fifths vote) would have to vote to remove in order to reach, and necessarily exceed, the requisite two-thirds vote. If the mayor’s vote was never to be counted in a vote to remove a municipal appointee, there would be no need in the second paragraph of § 11 — 43-160 to specify precisely “a two-thirds vote.” The provision in question requires “a two-thirds vote of all those elected to the council,” not a two-thirds vote of only those in attendance, assuming a quorum had been achieved, or a two-thirds vote of those voting, as opposed to abstaining. If the mayor and five council persons are entitled to vote to remove a municipal appointee and to have those votes counted, a two-thirds vote would be the vote of four persons.

If the record established who had appointed the police chief to office, and if that person was the present or a former mayor, I would conclude that the mayor’s singular vote to remove the police chief was effective under the first sentence of § 11 — 43—160. The record, however, does not establish who appointed the police chief, thereby eliminating that avenue of analysis.

Although the parties do not address the difference between a city and a town under § 11-40-6 and therefore did not argue the significance of the term “city council” in the second paragraph of § 11-43-160, we nonetheless should consider and apply that pivotal distinction. As has been often stated by this Court, we will affirm a trial judge’s ruling for any reason reasonably available to the trial judge under the record, consonant with the notice requirements of due process. See Taylor v. Stevenson, 820 So.2d 810, 814 (Ala.2001) (“We will affirm a trial court if it is right for any reason supported by the record.”). Where the terms “cities and towns,” “city or town,” and “city council” are used as terms of classification, it is appropriate for us to take judicial notice of the definitions of those terms provided by the Legislature appearing elsewhere in the same title of the Code of Alabama.

For these reasons, I dissent. 
      
      . This rule of construction is particularly well suited for statutes that were enacted simultaneously. Both of the statutes at issue here were first enacted by the Legislature in 1907.