Opinion ID: 2060173
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Does ch. 234, Stats., grant corporate powers and privileges by special or private law in violation of art. IV, secs. 31 and 32, Wisconsin Constitution?

Text: Art. IV, sec. 31, Wisconsin Constitution, in part provides: ... The legislature is prohibited from enacting any special or private laws in the following cases: . . . 7th. For granting corporate powers or privileges, except to cities. Art. IV, sec. 32, Wisconsin Constitution, provides: ... The legislature shall provide general laws for the transaction of any business that may be prohibited by section thirty-one of this article, and all such laws shall be uniform in their operation throughout the state. Respondents direct our attention to State ex rel. Church Mut. Ins. Co. v. Cheek (1890), 77 Wis. 284, 46 N. W. 163, which held unconstitutional a statute authorizing members of the Methodist Episcopal Church to organize a corporation to insure church and parsonage properties owned by said denomination as contravening the provisions of paragraph 7, sec. 31, art. IV. The statute was held to be a special or private law in that the object of the act was to authorize the incorporation and organization of only one corporation. [32] The Authority, denominated a public body corporate and politic, is granted only those powers necessary or convenient to implement the purposes of ch. 234, Stats. It was not the intention of the legislature to create a corporation in the ordinary sense. Ch. 234 grants to the Authority those corporate powers essential to its performance in improving and otherwise promoting the health, welfare and prosperity of the people of this state. In State ex rel. La Follette v. Reuter (1967), 36 Wis. 2d 96, 112, 113, 153 N. W. 2d 49, this court interpreted art. IV, sec. 31, Wisconsin Constitution, in the following manner:  Kimball v. Rosendale (1877), 42 Wis. 407, 415, discussed the original constitutional amendment of 1871 which became art. IV, sec. 31, of our constitution: `It is impossible to mistake the object or spirit of this amendment. For years, the statute books had been encumbered with multitudinous acts of the several kinds prohibited; vicious not only in quantity but in quality. In some of the instances prohibited, they meddled in purely private matters; authorizing what might be done without the authority or with judicial authority. In other instances, they conferred special authority in cases within general authority. And in all instances relating to things publici juris, they broke the uniformity and harmony of law so essential to good government; substituting special for general rules, and rendering a large body of the municipal law fragmentary in character, and different by locality. After long endurance of such excesses of legislation, the amendment of 1871 was adopted; in order, so far as it went, to confine legislation to its legitimate objects, to substitute general for special enactments, and to restore order and uniformity to municipal law. And we cannot doubt that, except so far as power over any of the nine several subjects is reserved by other provisions of the constitution, the amendment was intended to withdraw them, and does effectually withdraw them, from any exercise of legislative authority over them, by private or special statutes....' In determining the constitutionality of a particular statute, as it relates to this section of the constitution, the courts have been motivated by such polar factors as curing the abuses which prompted the original 1871 amendment and the overwhelming desirability of the particular statute then under consideration. . . . The purpose of this constitutional provision is to insure that legislation will promote the general welfare and further statewide interests, as opposed to private concerns.... Art. IV, sec. 31, Wisconsin Constitution, was not meant to deny the legislature the authority to grant limited corporate powers to the entities it creates to promote a public and state purpose. Ch. 234, Stats., does not involve the promotion of private or local interests, as condemned by the framers of sec. 31, but a legitimate governmental and statewide purpose as declared by the legislature. Ch. 234 is not objectionable as either a special or private law.