Opinion ID: 1963790
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: I-A-2 The Generally Relevant Legislative Delegations of Authority

Text: Tracing the history of the generalized legislative delegation to municipalities of the authority to use tax-derived monies leads us back to the beginning of statehood, and beyond. No general grant was given. Instead, tracking Massachusetts P. L. 1785, Chapter 75 § 7, the Maine Legislature gave to municipalities the power to raise taxes for the settlement, maintenance and support of the ministry, schools, the poor, and other necessary charges. (P.L.1821, Chapter CXIV § 6) (emphasis supplied) This Court early construed other necessary charges as limited to expenses . . . clearly incident to the execution of the power granted, or which necessarily arise in the fulfilment of the duties imposed by law. Bussey v. Gilmore, 3 Me. 191, 196 (1824) In Bussey, holding ultra vires the use of revenue to provide free passage over a toll bridge to town residents, this Court expressly adopted the Massachusetts construction of the predecessor statute in Stetson v. Kempton, 13 Mass. 271 (1816). Stetson indicates, by concrete example, the scope accorded the words and other necessary charges by both the Massachusetts and Maine Courts. Such charges embraced the ordinary expenses of the year; such as the payment of such municipal officers as they should be obliged to employ, the support and defence of such actions as they might be parties to, and the expenses they would incur in performing such duties as the laws imposed, as the erection of powder-houses, providing ammunition, making and repairing highways and town roads, and other things of a like nature; which are necessary charges, because the effect of a legal discharge of their corporate duty.. . . But it cannot be supposed that the building of a theatre, a circus, or any other place of mere amusement, . . . could be justified under the term necessary town charges. (p. 279 of 13 Mass.) (emphasis in original) In this vein, this Court struck down in Hooper v. Emery, 14 Me. 375 (1837) the distribution of revenues among town residents and in Gale v. South Berwick, 51 Me. 174 (1863) the payment of a reward for apprehension of a suspected murderer. See also: Inhabitants of Westbrook v. Inhabitants of Deering, 63 Me. 231 (1874). However, as was observed in Opinion of the Justices, 52 Me. 595, 598 (1863): [b]y subsequent Acts, further powers. . . [were] conferred upon towns, and the exercise of doubtful powers. . . confirmed by legislative authority. [8] By 1841 the Legislature had added, in the revised version of P.L.1821, Chapter CXIV § 6, the power to raise funds for highways, bridges and cemeteries. R.S.1841, Chapter 5 § 22. After 1841 the Legislature continued to add, project by project, to the list of individualized undertakings for which monies were authorized to be raised by municipal taxation. It was in this manner that municipalities were delegated authority to use tax revenues for public parks. Thus, towns comprising more than 1,000 inhabitants were, in 1881, given authority, with particular limitations not here material, to take land by eminent domain for public parks and compensate accordingly. P.L. 1881, Chapter 76 § 1. Implicit in such delegation of the power to take and compensate is the power to allocate municipal revenues to that end. Subsequently, the Legislature permitted municipalities of any size to choose park commissioners who shall have the care and superintendence of the public parks and direct the expenditures of all moneys appropriated for the improvement of the same. P.L. 1885, Chapter 291) (emphasis supplied) These two statutes, read with all their necessary implications, [9] provide cogent evidence that the Legislature had conferred on municipalities authority to acquire and maintain land for public parks through the use of local tax revenues. Hence, we conclude that as of 1903 the Legislature had already delegated to municipalities authority enabling the City of Portland to accept Miriam Winslow's deed and expend city funds to fulfill its conditions. Remaining to be considered, however, in this same area of the legislative delegation of poweris the question whether, as of 1903, the Legislature had imposed restrictions as to the particular methodology by which a donative transfer such as Miriam Winslow's must have been made to be capable of being validly maintained by the use of tax revenues. Initially, we address this question independently of the money . . . in trust and conditional gift statutes. Our perusal of early authorities convinces us that municipalities had been delegated authority to take title to real or personal property in either the manner of trust or conditional gift provided only that there was compliance with the constitutional and statutory strictures as to purpose already discussed. In 1825, the Massachusetts Court turned back an attack on a will devising land to the South Parish of Sutton, to be applied for the use of schools, and to be kept by the inhabitants forever. Inhabitants of First Parish in Sutton v. Cole, 3 Pick. 232 (1825). That Court observed that the real issue was not whether the parish could take in trust but whether it could receive donations for the contemplated purpose  schoolsinsofar as parishes, unlike towns, had no legal obligation to maintain schools. 3 Pick. 232, 237-238. Because, however, parishes had statutory authority (if not obligation) to establish schools, and to raise taxes upon the inhabitants therefor, [10] the gift was held valid. See also: Nourse v. Merriam, 8 Cush. 11 (1851); Webb v. Neal, 5 Allen 575 (1863); Vidal v. Girard's Executors, 2 How. (43 U.S.) 127, 11 L.Ed. 205 (1844). The opinions of this Court reflect the same views. In 1881, relying on the above-cited authorities, this Court held valid a residuary trust of mixed, real and personal property established for educational purposes. Piper v. Moulton, 72 Me. 155, 159 (1881). In Piper, Chief Justice Appleton reiterated without reservation the rule of Sutton v. Cole : A trust for the support of schools or of a particular school as a high school, or for any purpose of general public utility is a valid trust. . . . towns can hold property in trust for purposes within in the general scope of their corporate existence. [11] (emphasis supplied) Similarly, the Court in Luques v. Inhabitants of Dresden, 77 Me. 186, 191-192 (1885) struck down a gift of real property in trust to the Town of Dresden not on grounds of the form of the transaction or the type of property conveyed but because of its purpose and conditionsthe expenditure of tax-derived monies to maintain a private cemetery. See also: Manufacturers National Bank v. Woodward, 138 Me. 70, 21 A.2d 705 (1941); City of Bangor v. Merrill Trust Company, 149 Me. 160, 99 A.2d 298 (1953). We conclude, therefore, that pre-1903 limitations on the authority of municipalities to receive donations pertained to constitutional and statutory considerations as to the use for which the property was given rather than any distinctions relating to the type of property conveyed or the methodology of transfer. Having thus decided that as of 1903 the City of Portland had already been given a generalized authority to receive Miriam Winslow's gift of land either in the manner of trust or conditional gift, we turn to the question whether the money. . . in trust and conditional gift statutes were enacted with intention to supplant the previously conferred authority and be, henceforth, the exclusive sources of municipal authority as to the matters covered by their provisions. We hold that the money . . . in trust and conditional gift statutes were without such purport. Statutes in derogation of existing law require strict construction. Stanton v. Trustees of St. Joseph's College, Me., 233 A.2d 718, 722 (1967). Neither of the statutes under scrutiny expressly deprived municipalities of rights already enjoyed, and we find lacking any manifestation of intent to do so by implication. More important, we discern the legislative purpose, read in light of our prior discussion, as having been to supplement rather than displace. First, we look to the literal words of the statutes. The money . . . in trust sections, in effect in 1903 as R.S.1883, Chapter 3 §§ 51-54and now codified, as amended, by 30 M.R.S.A. § 1903govern donations for benevolent, religious, or educational purposes, and, more specifically, for monuments and public cemeteries. Similarly, the sections concerning devises, bequests and conditional gifts of any type of property, in effect in 1903 as P.L.1887, Chapter 11 §§ 1-2, as amended by P.L. 1899, Chapter 44 §§ 1-2, and now as 30 M.R.S.A. § 1904, contemplated gifts for educational, benevolent and charitable purposes and public cemeteries. We read these phrases as evidencing legislative intent to authorize the receipt of donations for purposes supplementing those previously expressly recognized as authorized for municipalitiesthat is, for purposes which, although public in relation to constitutional limitations, may not yet have been explicitly delegated to municipalities. [12] Accordingly, as here applicable, the money. . . in trust and conditional gift statutes did not purport to restrict whatever authority had already been reposed in municipalities to receive property and to raise revenues by taxation to maintain it. The prior decisions of this Court are consistent with this view. We previously quoted the judicial assessment of the course of legislative delegation of authority to municipalities in the nineteenth century, that [b]y subsequent Acts, . . . the exercise of doubtful powers . . . [was] confirmed by legislative authority. Opinion of the Justices, 52 Me. 595, 598 (1863) (emphasis supplied) The quotation reveals this Court's early awareness that many statutory provisions had sprung from excess caution by the Legislature. Insofar as the two statutes under examination referred to an area of authority already exercised by municipalitiesfor example, by expressly including educational purposesthey reflect the legislative abundance of caution to confirm the validity of the exercise of such powers. Further, this Court has never referred to the money . . . in trust and conditional gift statutes now under consideration as the sole sources of municipal power in any of the instances in which municipal authority had already been independently granted. The events giving rise to the opinion in Piper v. Moulton, supra, occurred after enactment of the money . . . in trust statute. [13] While the Court did refer to a statute requiring municipal support of public schools, it did not discuss the money. . . in trust statute and relied instead on the power of towns, as already independently conferred, to receive gifts in trust for purposes previously legislated as municipal and also within constitutional bounds. [14] The treatment accorded the money. . . in trust section in Luques v. Dresden, supra, decided in 1885, was similar. Noting express authority in the town of Dresden to accept legacies for the benefit of burial grounds by virtue of R.S. 1883, Chapter 15 § 14, the Court struck down without reference to the money. . . in trust statute a gift of mixed property requiring the town to levy taxes to support a private cemetery. The fault was not in the gift's form or the nature of the subject property; the infirmity was that the gift required expenditure of municipal revenues for private purposes. The legislative limitation of such conveyances to land and legacies for its maintenance in R.S.1883, Chapter 15 § 14 also recognized this distinction; such conveyances, unlike a conditional gift or trust of real estate alone, did not involve future outlay of public funds for impermissible purposes. We, therefore, regard Piper and Luques as primarily concerned with pre-existing municipal powers, and limits thereon, to receive and maintain property. Statutes such as the money . . . in trust sections and the burial ground provision cited in Luques were seen as supplemental to the established pattern of law described earlier. We find nothing in decisions following the enactment of the conditional gift statute in 1887 to change this view. On the contrary, the opinions of this Court continued to deny any exclusive effect to either the money . . . in trust or the conditional gift statute. In City of Bangor v. Beal, 85 Me. 129, 26 A. 1112 (1892), the money . . . in trust statute was cited in support of municipal power to accept and execute a trust of money for the promotion of education. That power was not there contested and we do not read the Court's reference to the money . . . in trust statute, within whose express terms that particular trust fell, as intimating that the money . . . in trust statute overrode whatever authority had previously been delegated to the municipality to take the gift in question. Likewise, the citation of the money. . . in trust statute in Inhabitants of York v. Stewart, 110 Me. 523, 526, 87 A. 372 (1913) was only to assist the discussion of the manner in which the performance of a trust falling within the express terms of the money . . . in trust statute would be regulated; there was no intimation concerning either the nature of the municipality's authority as it existed before, and independently of, the enactment of the money . . . in trust statute, or the effect of that statute on any such already existing authority. Finally, many other decisions of this Court have upheld sub silentio the authority of municipalities to take gifts of real, as well as personal, property for public purposes whether in the manner of trusts or conditional gifts. See: e.g., Farrington v. Putnam, 90 Me. 405, 37 A. 652 (1897); Manufacturers National Bank v. Woodward, 138 Me. 70, 21 A.2d 705 (1941); City of Bangor v. Merrill Trust Company, 149 Me. 160, 99 A.2d 298 (1953); City of Belfast v. Goodwill Farm, 150 Me. 17, 103 A.2d 517 (1954). We hold, therefore, that even if Miriam Winslow's conveyance may have been intended to create a charitable trust of land, the City had lawful authority to be the trustee and use tax-raised monies to fulfill the trust purposes. Such authority had been legislatively delegated before, and independently of, the enactment of the money . . . in trust and conditional gift statutes, and was not overridden by them.