Opinion ID: 1177991
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: other significant issues

Text: Article XVI, section 7 of our state's Constitution prescribes: Money may be drawn from the Treasury only through appropriation made by law.... For fiscal year 1982-1983 the Legislature has appropriated $36,015,838 [f]or support of Judiciary, Judicial Council including specifically $20,964,632 for the Courts of Appeal. Further, the  amounts appropriated ... are intended to fully fund all of the judgeships and places of sitting created by Chapter 959 of the Statutes of 1981.  (Italics added.) [3] Notwithstanding that brief but unambiguous legislative pronouncement, real parties contend that no such funds have legally been appropriated and that the superior court's injunction accordingly should stay in effect. Why might the pertinent 1982-1983 appropriation be invalid? Because, say real parties, chapter 959 either was void ab initio or become void on January 1, 1982, its effective date. We discuss first the latter contention. It is conceded in this case that real parties' complaint would have been groundless if chapter 959's effective date had been July 1, 1982. But the Legislature's choice of January 1 instead of July 1, it is argued, was fatal since on that day the Governor, the Controller, and the courts' Administrative Director were endowed with powers they could not exercise because, allegedly, the Legislature had provided no money. Real parties cite no precedents. They maintain, though, that their view is supported by article IV, section 12 of the Constitution and, particularly, by the pronouncement in section 12, subdivision (d) that [a]ppropriations ... are void unless passed in each house by rollcall vote ... two thirds of the membership concurring. Chapter 959 did not receive a two-thirds vote. [4] Nowhere in the words of the Constitution or in California legislative annals or in juridical opinions can we discover any overriding rule that the Legislature may not, without funding the initial fiscal year, create agencies or offices, including courts and judgeships. On the contrary, in this century the remarkable, nationwide development of budgeting-and-appropriating powers evidences a basic concern that laws which authorize be distinguished from those which appropriate. Legislatures first decide whether a need for a new agency or office seems established; they then decide whether and how to prescribe the funding. (1), (2) (See fn. 5.) During the first half of this year none of the chapter 959 judgeships was filled, and no new court was inaugurated. As of July 1, though, funding that indisputably meets the constitutional tests of adequacy had been provided. [5] Whatever might have been a problem had the Governor, the Controller, or the courts' Administrative Director taken action during the first six months, in fact they took no action. As of now, no longer is there a problem. Pursuant to article VI, section 3 (quoted above), once again the Legislature (via ch. 959) has divide[d] the State into districts each containing a court of appeal with one or more divisions ... consist[ing] of a presiding justice and 2 or more associate justices. Further, pursuant to section 12, subdivision (c) of article IV the 1982 Budget Act fully fund[s] all of the judgeships and places of sitting created by Chapter 959 (see fn. 3, ante ). Nothing else is required. The suggestion that chapter 959 was void ab initio (i.e., from its date of enactment) is based on the clause in article IV, section 12, subdivision (d) that provides: Appropriations ... are void unless passed in each house by rollcall vote ... two thirds of the membership concurring. Real parties argue that chapter 959, passed by less than a two-thirds vote, contained implied appropriations and that thus the whole chapter is void. The only reference to money in chapter 959, however, appears in its section 6, the Orange County library-and-equipment clause. We concluded above that the restrictions there were superseded by the 1982 Budget Act. No words in chapter 959 curtail a subsequently created authority to make expenditures from current appropriations. Section 6 itself dealt only with the 1981-1982 budget; it stressed that funding for [Orange County] support staff [should] be provided from existing resources, and funding for the four judges ... is provided in the [1981] Budget Act. Nonetheless as to judges, it is argued, the separation of powers doctrine commands that  once appointed  judges are entitled to their salaries. (Cf. fn. 5, ante. ) Again we stress that no chapter 959 judges have been appointed. If any had been, though, it appears that a claim for salary would have involved not only chapter 959 but also Government Code section 68200 et seq., which fix base salaries for all Supreme Court and Court of Appeal justices and judges in trial courts of record. Those Government Code sections apparently were approved by vote of 25 Senators, 2 short of the two-thirds required for appropriation bills. (Stats. 1976, ch. 1183, §§ 1-3 (Assem. Bill No. 3844); 9 Sen. J. (1975-1976 Reg. Sess.) p. 16794.) Yet clearly those sections and like laws are valid. Thus, even were it regarded as a law that sets judges' salaries, chapter 959 did not need a two-thirds vote. [6] Real parties urge that a proposal establishing a new state agency and appropriating its initial support funds entails not only an appropriation `for the ensuing fiscal year' within the meaning of Art. IV, sec. 12, subd. (a), but also for an indeterminate number of fiscal years thereafter. Without further legislative action, though, even special appropriations for starting a new agency would not fund its operation in later years. Moreover, no clause in the Constitution extends to laws that create new agencies or offices the two-thirds requirement the people have prescribed for appropriations (art. IV, § 12, subd. (d)), urgency statutes (art. IV, § 8, subd. (d)), and a limited listing of certain laws on taxation and other matters (e.g., art. XIII A, § 3; art. IV, § 4). Absent such a clause, the obvious implication is that agency- and office-creating statutes indeed may be passed by simple majority, separately from whatever budget or appropriation act is needed for implementation. Real parties suggest that the initial costs of an agency are not usual current expenses to which budget acts assertedly are confined. (See Const., art. IV, § 8, subd. (c)(2) (appropriations for usual current expenses take immediate effect); McClure v. Nye (1913) 22 Cal. App. 248 [133 P. 1145] (appropriations to construct buildings were not for usual current expenses and did not take immediate effect).) Yet the budget bill must itemize expenditures (art. IV, § 12, subd. (c)), including capital outlays, whether or not they are usual and current. And both the 1981 and the 1982 Budget Acts include urgency clauses, seemingly to assure their taking immediate effect without reliance on the usual current expenses reference in article IV, section 8, subdivision (c)(2). (See Stats. 1981, ch. 99, § 36.00; Stats. 1982, ch. 326, § 36.00.) Petitioners cite a precedent for creating appellate judgeships by a statute that specifies no appropriation for their support. Item 17 of the 1973 Budget Act (Stats. 1973, ch. 129) appropriated a lump sum for appellate courts and added a proviso that $72,000 of the funds appropriated in this item shall not be expended unless legislation is enacted during the 1973-74 Regular Session establishing an additional judgeship for the Third Appellate District. When that law was enacted Government Code section 69103 declared, The Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District consists of one division having four judges and shall hold its regular sessions at Sacramento. Later, on October 2, 1973, section 69103 was amended to provide that, until January 15, 1975, the Third Appellate District should have six judges and, on and after that date, seven. (Stats. 1973, ch. 1124.) Section 4 of the amending chapter provided Notwithstanding the provisions of Item 17 of the Budget Act of 1973, the seventy-two thousand dollars ($72,000) reserved by that item for an additional judgeship in the Third Appellate District of the Court of Appeal may be expended for more than one additional judgeship for that district. Is that relaxation of the previously imposed budgetary restriction distinguishable from the legislative history here? We think not, for in 1973 the Legislature patently did not treat chapter 1124 as an appropriation bill. In its final paragraph, the Legislative Counsel's Digest of the last-amended version of Senate Bill No. 1149 (which became ch. 1124) reads:  Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes.... (Italics added.) Though chapter 1124 in fact passed both houses with more than a two-thirds vote (see 5 Assem.J. (1973 Reg. Sess.) p. 8880; 4 Sen.J. (1973 Reg. Sess.) pp. 6754-6755), that digest reflects the Legislative Counsel's opinion that the bill contained no appropriation. The Legislature's creation  with no contemporaneous appropriation  of three new judgeships in 1973 (ch. 1124) and many new judgeships and appellate courts in 1981 (ch. 959) raises a strong presumption that accompanying appropriations were not constitutionally required. (See Methodist Hosp. of Sacramento v. Saylor (1971) 5 Cal.3d 685, 692 [97 Cal. Rptr. 1, 488 P.2d 161] (referring to a settled principle of construction, i.e., the strong presumption in favor of the Legislature's interpretation of a provision of the Constitution); cf. San Jose Mercury-News v. Municipal Court (1982) 30 Cal.3d 498, 514 [179 Cal. Rptr. 772, 638 P.2d 655].) Finally, by our clerk's letter of July 8, 1982, real parties were invited to comment on the effect of the 1982 Budget Act in this case. In response they have argued that the absence of appropriations in chapter 959 and a claimed absence of appropriations for new judgeships and courts in the 1981 Budget Act made that chapter void ab initio, incapable of being revived by the 1982 Budget Act. They invoke the principle that [a]n act of the legislature which is in conflict with the constitution is no statute at all. ( Reclamation District v. Superior Court (1916) 171 Cal. 672, 676 [154 P. 845]; see Norton v. Shelby County (1886) 118 U.S. 425, 442 [30 L.Ed. 178, 186, 6 S.Ct. 1121].) They concede exceptions to the principle, and properly they note the inapplicability here of one exception: the giving of limited effect to a void statute in order to protect rights created by innocent reliance on its validity. (See Chicot County Dist. v. Bank (1940) 308 U.S. 371, 374 [84 L.Ed. 329, 332-333, 60 S.Ct. 317].) Rights have not intervened here because the new divisions are not now established, the new judgeships not yet filled. (3) Real parties then identify, but puzzlingly fail to discuss, another exception: [A] partially invalid statute may be validated by later legislation. That exception applies here. Real parties concede, for instance, that the 1982 Budget Act validly superseded chapter 959's section 6 (see above). Why then would the first five sections still be invalid? Not because of what those sections say, it is argued, but because of what they fail to say; namely, that funds are available for spending. We hold that the 1982 Budget Act cures the alleged omission and renders the chapter fully operative. In point is County of Los Angeles v. Jones (1936) 6 Cal.2d 695 [59 P.2d 489], for example, where the Legislature enacted amendments (Stats. 1935, ch. 729, p. 1999) to sections of the Assessment Bond Refunding Act of 1933 (Stats. 1933, ch. 749, p. 1915) in response to a decision holding the act unconstitutional ( County of Los Angeles v. Rockhold (1935) 3 Cal.2d 192 [44 P.2d 340, 100 A.L.R. 149]). Ruling the amendments valid, this court rejected the contention that they were void simply because the law they modified had been declared unconstitutional. ( County of Los Angeles v. Jones, supra, 6 Cal.2d at p. 708.) [7]