Opinion ID: 2088385
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the firemen's first case and the policemen's case.

Text: By their bills both the firemen and the policemen sought determinations that the 1972 salary provisions in their contracts were valid and binding on the city and its mayor and that, pursuant to the contracts and certain ordinances passed and approved in 1971, the defendants were required to pay the 1972 salary increases beginning as of January 1, 1972. The bills were submitted and argued together in the Superior Court and a decree was entered in each case denying relief to the plaintiffs; the Appeals Court rendered a decision affirming the final decrees on their appeals. Mendes v. Taunton, 1 Mass. App. Ct. 486 (1973). [6] The facts of the two cases are set forth in the Appeals Court's opinion [7] but it will be helpful for the purposes of our review to repeat the following. The firemen's and the policemen's contracts with increased wage schedules for 1971 and 1972 were executed on August 24, 1971, to be in effect from January 1, 1971, through December 31, 1972. In August and September, 1971 (which was an election year for the city), the council approved two supplemental appropriations to fund the contracted-for 1971 wage increases and adopted, by a two-thirds vote in each instance, two ordinances which purported to incorporate the 1971 and 1972 increases for both groups of employees and to repeal inconsistent ordinances. The firemen and policemen received their wage increases for 1971. They did not receive the increases in 1972 because the city and its newly elected mayor refused in the firemen's case to pay the increase notwithstanding a provision therefor in the annual budget, and refused in the policemen's case to implement those increases by requesting the necessary appropriations. The city's and the mayor's contention, which was accepted by the trial judge and a majority of the Appeals Court, [8] is that both the contracts and the 1971 ordinances were invalid as to the 1972 wage increases because they were in direct conflict with G.L.c. 44, § 33A. We disagree. 1. The Appeals Court construed the requirement of G.L.c. 44, § 33A, that no ordinance providing for a wage increase for municipal officers or employees is to be enacted unless it is to be operative for more than three months during the financial year in which it is passed (the three-month requirement; see fn. 2, supra, for the full text of § 33A) to mean that both the ordinance and all wage increases provided for therein must be in effect for this three-month period. In the view of the majority of that court, this construction best satisfied the statutory purpose of fiscal responsibility embodied in the three-month requirement. Since obviously the 1972 wage increases would not take effect in 1971, the majority held that those parts of the contracts and of the 1971 ordinances relating to the 1972 increases were invalid. As Justice Goodman points out in his dissenting opinion, however, this construction of § 33A would render virtually ineffective the important provision in G.L.c. 149, § 1781, permitting three-year collective bargaining contracts for municipal employees. [9] Furthermore, as he also points out, the construction is not required by the language in which the three-month provision is framed. 1 Mass. App. Ct. at 493-494 (1973) (Goodman, J., dissenting). We have remarked in the past on the importance of coordinating the municipal employees collective bargaining statute, G.L.c. 149, §§ 178G-178N, with earlier statutes dealing with municipal law in order to form, if possible, ... a harmonious whole consistent with the legislative purpose disclosed in the new act. Chief of Police of Dracut v. Dracut, 357 Mass. 492, 499 (1970), quoting from Mathewson v. Contributory Retirement Appeal Bd. 335 Mass. 610, 614 (1957). We have also upheld, in other contexts, the validity of the provision in c. 149, § 178I, authorizing collective bargaining contracts of up to three years' duration. See, e.g., Fitchburg Teachers Assn. v. School Comm. of Fitchburg, 360 Mass. 105, 106-107 (1971); Kerrigan v. Boston, 361 Mass. 24, 34 (1972); Norton Teachers Assn. v. Norton, 361 Mass. 150, 155 (1972). We believe, as did Justice Goodman, that the three-month requirement of G.L.c. 44, § 33A, can and should be construed in a manner which does not render invalid either the two-year contracts or the 1971 ordinances implementing the 1972 wage increases provided for in those contracts. [The three-month requirement] was obviously designed to prevent city councils ... from imposing in one year upon the taxpayers of later years the burden of salary increases not to take effect until these later years ... [and] to make each council take immediate responsibility in the year of council action for some of the fiscal and tax burden of any salary increases voted by it (emphasis supplied). Brucato v. Lawrence, 338 Mass. 612, 618 (1959). Nothing in this case conflicts with these purposes. The 1971 ordinances, enacted by the council and approved by the mayor more than three months before the end of the year, provided for certain wage increases to take effect in 1971 as well as 1972, and the council appropriated the necessary funds for the earlier year. Thus it was taking responsibility for some of the fiscal ... burden of the increase. This is not a case like Clements v. Treasurer of Cambridge, 324 Mass. 73, 74 (1949); Booker v. Woburn, 325 Mass. 334, 336 (1950); or Brucato v. Lawrence, supra , where no part of the ordinances providing for salary increases was to go into effect until the following year. The statute speaks of the ordinance in relation to the requirement of being operative for more than three months, and it seems logical to construe that language to mean only the ordinance and not the ordinance and all of the increases provided for therein. In Hackett v. Worcester, 346 Mass. 634, 637 (1964), we construed in this manner the same words as they appeared in another clause of the same sentence in § 33A, and we will so construe them here. We therefore conclude that the three-month requirement in § 33A does not conflict with those portions of the 1971 ordinances providing for the 1972 wage increases. 2. The city claims in the policemen's case that, irrespective of the three-month requirement, the 1971 ordinance violated the additional provision in § 33A that [n]o ... increase in rate [shall be] made by ordinance, vote or appointment during the financial year subsequent to the submission of the annual budget unless provision therefor has been made by means of a supplemental appropriation. It argues that, since the 1971 ordinance was passed after the annual budget for that year was submitted and before the supplemental appropriation for the 1971 wage increases was approved, the ordinance is invalid. We do not agree. It seems clear that the purpose of the supplemental appropriation provision is to prevent a city council from making empty promises of salary increases that it cannot or will not keep. In this case, however, the council carried through with its promise by appropriating the funds for the 1971 increase in sufficient time for the increase to be operative for more than three months during the financial year in which it ... [was] passed [1971]. G.L.c. 44, § 33A. The supplemental appropriation provision is not applicable to the 1972 increases as the council obviously had no authority to appropriate funds in 1971 to satisfy a 1972 budget item. See Brucato v. Lawrence, 338 Mass. 612, 617 (1959); Fitchburg Teachers Assn. v. School Comm. of Fitchburg, 360 Mass. 105, 108 (1971). 3. In light of the construction we place on both provisions in § 33A at issue here, we hold that those parts of the 1971 ordinances providing for increased wages to the firemen and policemen in 1972 were valid. It therefore was incumbent on the mayor, as the official responsible for submitting the annual budget to the council pursuant to G.L.c. 44, § 32, to include in the 1972 budget request sums sufficient to cover those wage increases and incumbent on the city to pay them. See c. 44, § 33A (first sentence); Rock v. Pittsfield, 316 Mass. 348, 350-351 (1944); James v. Mayor of New Bedford, 319 Mass. 74, 76 (1946); Doherty v. Woburn, 345 Mass. 523, 528 (1963); Hackett v. Worcester, 346 Mass. 634, 637 (1964). 4. The firemen and policemen argue that, regardless of the validity of the ordinances, the mayor was obligated under the terms of the contracts themselves and of G.L.c. 149, § 178I, to seek the necessary funds to implement the wage increases. In view of our holding above, it is not necessary to reach these contentions. [10] We also need not consider the argument of the city that these two bills for declaratory relief should be dismissed as moot in light of ordinances passed in 1972 which reenacted the 1972 wage increases. [11] The obligation already imposed on the mayor and the city to pay those increases by virtue of the 1971 ordinances was not affected by the later ordinances.