Opinion ID: 2631894
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The terms budget and appropriation in charter subsection 5.02(c) encompass the school budget.

Text: The charter defines appropriation as a unit of funding ... in the municipal budget. [41] Long and the school district argue that the school budget is not a unit of funding ... in the municipal budget. They think it significant that separate sections of the charter discuss the municipal and school budgets. [42] The school district argues that this separation is highlighted by the mayor's ability to transfer unencumbered funds between departments within all appropriations except the school budget appropriation. [43] Long and the school district therefore argue that the item veto extends only to the municipal budget and not to the separate school budget. The school district also asserts that the term budget in the charter does not encompass the school system budget, because the Charter Review Commission did not mention the school budget when it discussed the item veto and because we have held that the assembly has no legislative power to make appropriations for specific items, programs or priorities provided for by the school board's budget. [44] The municipality replies that the Anchorage School District is part of the municipality, and that therefore the assembly's annual school budget ordinancewhich approves the total amount of the district's annual budget, determines the amount of funding from local sources, and appropriates the local source funds for the district's budgetis by its terms a municipal budget or appropriation measure. [45] The municipality also notes that the subsection 5.02(c) veto power does not distinguish between the budgets for general government, the school district, and the utilities, each of which has a separately identifiable municipal budget. [46] Finally, the municipality offers two reasons why the school budget process is described in a separate section of the municipal charter: first, because the school system operates on a separate fiscal year, and second, because the procedures for approving the school budget differ from the procedures for approving other budget items, not because the school budget was intended to be segregated from the municipal budget. We find the municipality's interpretation more persuasive. First, the school budget ordinance qualifies as a budget measure under subsection 5.02(c). A school budget ordinance is in appearance and substance a budget measure. Appellees provide no persuasive reason why it should not be treated as such. Second, it is significant that the school district is governmentally part of the municipality, [47] that the school district budget is for amounts that must be expended in order to operate public schools in the municipality, and that the school district budget includes amounts the municipality must contribute from local sources to operate the school system. We therefore agree with the municipality that the term municipal budget as used in the charter's definition of appropriation [48] inherently includes the school district budget. Further, as the municipality points out, the charter uses the term appropriation in sections which deal exclusively with the school budget. [49] This usage indicates that the charter framers considered the school district budget ordinance to be an appropriation. Subsection 6.05(c) directs the assembly to appropriate funds for the school district. [50] The ordinance appropriating these funds is both an appropriation and an appropriation measure for purposes of the charter. [51] Placing the topic of the school budget in a charter section apart from sections concerning other municipal budgets does not mean that the school budget is not part of the total municipal budget. Finally, given its absolute and relative size, it is counterintuitive to think that the school district's local source appropriation is not part of the municipal budget. The 1997-98 local source school appropriation required the municipality to contribute $100,228,823; this was about twenty-nine percent of the district's total operating budget of $358,723,000. [52] The local source school appropriation is also a very large part of the total municipal budget. [53]