Opinion ID: 1200360
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: State Fundamental Law

Text: ¶ 14 Art. 5 § 46 mandates in absolute terms statewide procedural uniformity for an entire class of similarly situated persons or things as well as uniformity for regulating affairs of counties. [32] The cited constitutional provision proscribes special laws that single out for different treatment less than an entire class of similarly situated persons or entities. [33] Affording disparate procedural remedies for the removal of an illegality from the budget would offend this State's fundamental law. Tax consumers and tax beneficiaries are affected in a like manner by a county budget's illegality. Giving for the very same inquiry one remedy (of a § 1415 protest) to taxpayers only and quite a different remedy (of mandamus) to tax consumers for the very same inquiry would create a procedural dichotomy that at once destroys the symmetry of Oklahoma's remedial regime and hence offends the § 46 uniformity-of-procedure mandate. For the sake and in the interest of advancing the public policy's protected goal of achieving certainty for the budget's finality, the two classes (taxpayers and tax consumers) cannot be viewed as permissibly discrete. ¶ 15 Tulsa Tribune Co. v. Okl. Horse Racing Com'n [34] teaches that litigants who comprise a class interested in the subject matter must be accorded an identical remedy to vindicate the divergent rights in their interest. There, the legislature created an action for those who would seek a public document's release. The court treated as a single class all those persons with an interest in a public document's release as well as in the suppression of the release. Those who seek to prevent the budget from becoming final on the grounds of its illegality must all be treated alike as an indivisible class. While the commissioners qua consumers may have goals divergent from taxpayers, they must be accorded an equally effective remedy. In short, the excise board's authority to correct the final budget by revision must also be invocable by the commissioners in order to prevent the extended presence of that illegality which could have been removed by a taxpayer's protest. ¶ 16 When a statute  as § 1415 in this case  may be susceptible of more than one meaning, the court's duty is to give its text that construction which would save the legislation from facial absurdity [35] as well as make it impervious to constitutional attack. [36] This is the meaning we place on it today.