Opinion ID: 1797600
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Conceptual and Experiential Background

Text: Local governmental autonomy or home rule is not a self-sufficient or absolute virtue. In actuality, it may exist only to the extent that the state constitution endows a local governmental entity with two interactive powers, viz., the power to initiate local legislation and the power of immunity from control by the state legislature. Clark, Judges and the Cities, 60-81 (1985). In other words, these powers, initiation and immunity, are the yin and yang that combine to produce all of the autonomy that a home rule local government may come to have. By the period of January 1973 through April 1974, when the present Louisiana Constitution and its Local Government Article were drafted, debated, and ratified, these concepts and their history were well known to home rule scholars and advocates. See e.g., VII Records of the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1973: Convention Transcripts, Sept. 25, 1973, statements of Delegate Lanier at 1395-96 (1977) [hereinafter cited as Records]; Id. Statements of Delegate Stagg, at 1400; Id. Sept. 21 at 1363-64. The first power, initiation, refers to a local government's ability to initiate legislation and regulation in the absence of express state legislative authorization. For example, if local governments have the power to regulate and legislate with respect to land use and zoning, then they are also able to initiate plans and designs for the formal spatial configuration of local economic activities. Clark, supra, at 60-75; Sato & Van Alstyne, State and Local Govt Law, 136-43 (1977). The power of immunity, on the other hand, is essentially the power of localities to act without fear of the supervisory authority of the state government. Immunity exists to the extent that the local entity is insulated from state legislative control. See Clark, supra, at 68. For example, a certain degree of immunity would result from a constitutional provision barring the legislature from changing local ordinances except by general law or by a supermajority vote. This basic distinction between the power of initiation and the power of immunity provides an interpretive key to comprehending diverse state constitutional home rule provisions. Sands & Libonati, Local Govt Law § 4.07 (supp, 1993). Before the turn of the century, a concept known as Dillon's rule, so named after one of its leading exponents, came to be widely recognized. Under that rule, unless the state constitution provides otherwise, local governments have no independent power of initiation or immunity; they possess only those powers granted them by the state legislature. Dillon, Municipal Corporations, §§ 230, 233, 237 (5th ed. 1911). The subsequent development of home rule may be seen as a struggle to overcome the Dillon rule with constitutional grants of powers of initiation or immunity to local governments and the growing recognition that both are necessary to any genuine degree of local autonomy. Early constitutional amendments attempted to provide a measure of home rule by enabling localities to legislate with respect to municipal affairs. Ohio Const. art. XVIII, § 3 (adopted 1912) (all powers of local self-government); Cal. Const. art. XI, § 6 (adopted 1896) (municipal affairs); Wis. Const. art. XI, § 3 (adopted 1924) (local affairs and government). These constitutional provisions granted both the power of initiation in regard to local affairs and the power of immunity from state regulation in this sphere. Court decisions interpreting this type of state-local test were inconsistent, however, and generally reflected either hostility toward home rule or undue deference to legislative intervention. Bishop v. San Jose, 1 Cal.3d 56, 81 Cal.Rptr. 465, 460 P.2d 137 (1969); County Securities Inc. v. Seacord, 278 N.Y. 34, 15 N.E.2d 179 (1938); Van Gilder v. City of Madison, 222 Wis. 58, 267 N.W. 25 (1936); Sato & Van Alstyne, supra, at 147-51; Vanlandingham, Municipal Home Rule in the United States, 10 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 269 (1968). The degree of local autonomy that home rule advocates believed they had gained through constitutional amendments was eroded by court decisions characterizing many interests as state interests and thus beyond the scope of local regulation. Newport Amusement Co. v. Maher, 92 R.I. 51, 166 A.2d 216 (1960); Pacific Tel. & Tel. Co. v. San Francisco, 51 Cal.2d 766, 336 P.2d 514 (1959). In 1953, the American Municipal Association (later, the National League of Cities (NLC)) sought to remedy the deficiency of the state-local test by proposing a model state constitutional provision under which all delegable legislative powers would be granted to the local government, subject to the legislature's power to deny local government's exercise of authority by state statute. American Municipal Ass'n, Model Constitutional Provisions for Municipal Home Rule, § 6 (1953). In 1968, the National Municipal League (NML) amended the NLC model to provide more immunity by providing that [a] ... city may exercise any legislative power ... not denied ... by general law.  National Municipal League, Model State Constitution § 8.02 (6th ed. 1963). Some states following the NML model required that the legislature must expressly deny or prohibit, in order to override, a local government's particular exercise of legislative power. Mont. Const. art. XI, § 6 (adopted 1972); N.M. Const. art X, § 6 D (adopted 1970); Alaska Const. art. X, § 11 (adopted 1956). Judicial interpretation and application of these models, however, continued to reflect undue concessions to acts of the legislature that tended to deprive local governments of authentic home rule. Chugach Electric Ass'n v. City of Anchorage, 476 P.2d 115 (Alaska 1970); State v. Haswell, 147 Mont. 492, 414 P.2d 652 (1966); Vanlandingham, Constitutional Municipal Home Rule Since the AMA (NLC) Model, 17 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 1 (1975); Sharp, Home Rule in Alaska: A Clash Between the Constitution and the Court, 3 UCLA-Alaska L.Rev. 1, 17 (1973). Consequently, the drafters and ratifiers of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution adopted more stringent forms of home rule safeguards. These provisions grant broad powers of immunity from control by the state legislature to two classes of home rule governments when they are exercising their legislative powers as authorized by the constitution, viz., (1) to preexisting home rule municipalities and parishes when exercising within their boundaries any legislative powers not in conflict with the 1974 state constitution; and (2) to all other local governments exercising home rule powers consistently with that constitution except when the exercise of such a power is denied by general law. La. Const. 1974 art. VI, §§ 4, 5, 7. In recent years, growing numbers of home rule exponents have come to realize that such provisions are necessary to guarantee any substantial degree of genuine local autonomy. See Vaubel, Toward Principles of State Restraint Upon the Exercise of Municipal Power in Home Rule, XXII Stetson L.Rev. 643 (1993) (citing other authorities); Vaubel, Toward Principles of State Restraint Upon the Exercise of Municipal Power in Home Rule, XX Stetson L.Rev. 5 (part I), 845 (part II) (1991) (citing other authorities).