Opinion ID: 2116901
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the statewide-to-local interpretation

Text: My Sister BOYLE'S opinion adopts the statewide-to-local interpretation first suggested as an option in our order granting leave to appeal, and urged before us by the MEA. While that interpretation might, at first glance, appear to be a superficially attractive compromise, it is clearly untenable as a construction of the language of § 29. It would require that the phrase, the state financed proportion of the necessary costs of any existing activity or service required of units of Local Government by state law, be interpreted in a fundamentally different manner depending on whether the base year (1978-79) or the year of challenged funding was at issue. [12] The relevant phrase, however, appears only once in § 29 and can have only one meaning. Whichever meaning is most persuasive must clearly apply both to the base year and the year of challenged funding. [13] I would therefore reject the statewide-to-local interpretation as no more persuasive than the local-to-local interpretation. [14] My colleague attempts to evade the logical impossibility of the statewide-to-local interpretation by stressing that the first and second sentences of § 29 must be read together, and by stressing that the first sentence refers to  the state financed proportion.... See BOYLE, J., ante, pp 249-251. I agree that it is generally appropriate to read a constitutional provision as a whole. In this instance, however, the different language of the first and second sentences of § 29 does not contain the key to the puzzle sought by my colleague. While the first and second sentences are obviously related, they address distinct and separable issues. The first sentence is a self-contained provision governing the funding of programs that were required by state law at the time the Headlee Amendment was passed. The second sentence is a self-contained provision governing the funding of new programs mandated by post-Headlee Amendment state laws. I have already acknowledged and discussed the obvious fact that the second sentence, in contrast to the first sentence, does apply on an individual unit basis. See n 2. Indeed, as I have noted, that very contrast in language supports the statewide-to-statewide interpretation with regard to the first sentence. See n 2. My colleague asserts that [t]he only language in § 29 that speaks directly to payment occurs in the second sentence.... BOYLE, J., ante, p 251. But this is not really true, and does not support the conclusion that my colleague draws. It is true that the second sentence in § 29 contains a more explicit reference to the state's duty to appropriat[e] and disburse[] the required funding to local governments, but this refers only to the separate requirements imposed by the second sentence. The first sentence independently refers to the state's payment responsibility in the year of challenged funding, by providing that the state shall not reduc[e] the proportionate funding level existing when the Headlee Amendment was passed, which is simply another way of saying that the state shall maintain and continue paying that proportionate amount of funding. [15] The fact that the first sentence in § 29 refers to  the state financed proportion does not support the statewide-to-statewide, the statewide-to-local, or the local-to-local interpretation, and simply does not provide the guidance discerned by my colleague. It is impossible to say, on the sole basis of the use of the word the, whether  the state financed proportion refers to the proportion as measured on a statewide or local unit basis. Consider a hypothetical constitutional provision stating: The state shall annually appropriate to each unit of local government the amount of funds required by each unit to provide adequate police services. The use of the does not necessarily imply or require that the term modified by the be a unique, unitary, or statewide entity. [T]he state financed proportion in § 29, like  the amount of funds in our hypothetical provision, could refer to the multiplicity of varying amounts or proportions of funding relevant to different local units. The argument for the statewide-to-statewide interpretation rests not on the use of the word the, but primarily, as a textual matter, on the grounds I have stated in part I. Shifting from textual to more broadly theoretical and policy-based arguments, my Sister BOYLE joins my Brother LEVIN in asserting that the statewide-to-statewide interpretation might theoretically permit the state to engage in some bizarre, extreme, or irrational form of funding redistribution, such as the hypothesis that the state might fund[] the cost of all mandated services in one county and none in the other eighty-two, BOYLE, J., ante, p 258, or the notion that the state might inadvertently, through the operation of the complex factors governing funding redistribution, shift funds from poorer districts to wealthier.... Ante, p 258, n 25. This parade-of-horribles type of argument misses the point in my view. I have already noted that [t]here may be any number of grounds, apart from the Headlee Amendment provision at issue, upon which to challenge any particular school funding equalization scheme. See part II, ante, p 270. More to the point, it would simply be unreasonable to suppose that the Headlee Amendment was designed or intended to prohibit or forestall any conceivably unwise, unfair, or even evil state fiscal policy that might be imagined. The first sentence of § 29 of the Headlee Amendment, as its text reveals, has the specific and limited objective of preventing any overall shifting of funding responsibilities for state-mandated programs from the state onto local governments. As I have discussed in part II, the statewide-to-statewide interpretation fully vindicates this objective. That there may be many unwise, unfair, or even evil state policies that would not be prohibited by § 29 under the statewide-to-statewide interpretation is a meaningless and irrelevant observation that would be true of any constitutional provision. As a wise judge once said: The process of Constitutional adjudication does not thrive on conjuring up horrible possibilities that never happen in the real world and devising doctrines sufficiently comprehensive in detail to cover the remotest contingency. [ New York v United States, 326 US 572, 583; 66 S Ct 310; 90 L Ed 326 (1946) (opinion of Frankfurter, J., joined by Rutledge, J.).] My Sister BOYLE takes me to task for what she describes as my assumption that the drafters of the [Headlee] [A]mendment were content to let the acceptability of discrete decisions within the aggregate responsibility, be evaluated in the polling place. Ante, p 259. Translated into plain English, this amounts to the proposition that, to the extent the state is not governed by constitutional restraints, it is free to do whatever it wants to do, subject only to the democratic verdict of the voters. I would heartily embrace this proposition, which I had thought was fundamental to our form of government. While I recognize that my colleague and I have an honest difference of opinion regarding the scope of the constitutional restraint at issue, I reject the notion that my analysis is flawed simply because it would leave some funding and distribution decisions by the state, within the overall confines of the Headlee Amendment, to the democratic judgment of the political process. As Chief Justice John Marshall once said: The wisdom and the discretion of [the members of the Legislature], their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at election, are, in this, as in many other instances, .. . the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure them from [the] abuse [of power]. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments. [ Gibbons v Ogden, 22 US (9 Wheat) 1, 197; 6 L Ed 23 (1824).]