Opinion ID: 1788426
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Municipal Purposes Under Article VIII, Section 2(b)

Text: The City asserts that municipal or public purposes should receive the same broad construction as municipal purposes under article VIII, section 2(b) of the Florida Constitution, which prescribes municipal powers. Adopted in the same 1968 revision as article VII, section 3(a), article VIII, section 2(b) provides in pertinent part: Municipalities shall have governmental, corporate and proprietary powers to enable them to conduct municipal government, perform municipal functions and render municipal services, and may exercise any power for municipal purposes except as otherwise provided by law. (Emphasis supplied.) Under this provision, municipalities have inherent power to meet municipal needs, and the legislature's retained power is ... one of limitation. Lake Worth Utils. Auth. v. City of Lake Worth, 468 So.2d 215, 217 (Fla.1985). Previously, municipalities were inherently powerless, absent a specific grant of power from the legislature. Id. We recognized the broad sweep of municipalities' inherent power under article VIII, section 2(b) in State v. City of Sunrise, 354 So.2d 1206 (Fla.1978), where we stated: Article VIII, Section 2, Florida Constitution, expressly grants to every municipality in this state authority to conduct municipal government, perform municipal functions, and render municipal services. The only limitation on that power is that it must be exercised for a valid municipal purpose. It would follow that municipalities are not dependent upon the Legislature for further authorization. Legislative statutes are relevant only to determine limitations of authority. Id. at 1209; see also City of Ocala v. Nye, 608 So.2d 15, 17 (Fla.1992) (reiterating municipal purposes requirement from City of Sunrise as only constitutional limitation on municipal power). In City of Boca Raton v. Gidman, 440 So.2d 1277, 1281 (Fla.1983), this Court held that providing day care educational facilities is a valid municipal purpose under article VIII, section 2(b). We stated that we would accept the Legislature's determination that an activity served a municipal purpose absent an abuse of discretion. See id. at 1280. The Court also noted that the term municipal purposes had been broadly interpreted and included such activities as maintenance and operation of a radio broadcasting system by a municipality, citing to State v. City of Jacksonville, 50 So.2d 532 (Fla.1951). Gidman, 440 So.2d at 1280. City of Jacksonville concerned validation of revenue certificates to finance a municipally owned and operated radio station. There this Court employed the same definition of municipal purpose as in McDavid and Saunders, the two pre-1968 tax exemption cases, stating that [t]hough there was a time when a municipal purpose was restricted to police protection or such enterprises as were strictly governmental that concept has been very much expanded and a municipal purpose may now comprehend all activities essential to the health, morals, protection and welfare of the municipality. City of Jacksonville, 50 So.2d at 535. Unfortunately, the language in some of these cases has been imprecise. See Gidman, 440 So.2d at 1281 (defining a municipal purpose as being  rationally related to the health, morals, protection and welfare of the municipality) (emphasis supplied); Basic Energy Corp. v. Hamilton County, 652 So.2d 1237, 1239 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995) (defining municipal purpose under article VIII, section 2(b) as one that is related to the health, morals, safety, protection or welfare of the municipality) (emphasis supplied). Therefore, we specifically distinguish precedent construing article VIII, section 2(b), which uses language that is overly broad for determining eligibility for the ad valorem tax exemption in article VII, section 3(a). There is another reason to conclude that the precedent construing municipal purposes under article VIII, section 2(b) is of limited use in construing article VII, section 3(a). As stated above, prior to the adoption of the 1968 Constitution, the Legislature had complete discretion to prescribe municipal powers. Thus, the legislative determination that operation of a radio station, parking garage, or public auditorium served a municipal or public purpose was largely unchecked, absent an abuse of discretion. See Gate City Garage, Inc. v. City of Jacksonville, 66 So.2d 653 (Fla.1953) (parking facility); Starlight Corp. v. City of Miami Beach, 57 So.2d 6 (Fla.1952) (auditorium); City of Jacksonville, 50 So.2d at 535 (radio station). The Court was unwilling to hold that the Legislature abused its discretion in determining that a municipal project that it had authorized served a public purpose. The precedent discussed above shows that this broad construction of municipal powers remains in force under article VIII, section 2(b), in which the Legislature's remaining authority is to limit, rather than authorize, municipal powers. In fact, the only restriction we have placed on the exercise of municipal powers for a municipal purpose under article VIII, section 2(b) is to hold that borrowing money for the primary purpose of reinvestment is not a valid municipal purpose. State v. City of Orlando, 576 So.2d 1315, 1317 (Fla.1991). Because the definition of municipal purposes applied under article VIII, section 2(b) has been imprecise, and because that provision and article VII, section 3(a) serve different functions, we conclude that not every municipal activity that the Legislature either declined to prohibit after the 1968 revision, or had authorized in older cases relied upon in construing the 1968 municipal powers provision, was intended to also qualify for the constitutional ad valorem tax exemption in article VII, section 3(a). Thus, an activity may serve valid municipal purposes under article VIII, section 2(b) and constitute a permissible municipal function, but not serve municipal or public purposes under article VII, section 3(a) making the property owned by the municipality and used exclusively by it for the activity eligible for the constitutional ad valorem property tax exemption.