Opinion ID: 1995280
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Heading: Delegation of Power to Contract for Annexation

Text: It is clear that the General Assembly of Maryland has the power to alter, establish and extend the boundaries of municipalities and, in the absence of constitutional limitations, this power is plenary and unlimited. McGraw v. Merryman, 133 Md. 247, 104 Atl. 540 (1918). Daly v. Morgan, 69 Md. 460, 16 Atl. 287 (1888). In McGraw our predecessors found no constitutional barrier to the extension by the General Assembly of the city limits of Baltimore City by including parts of Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County without providing for a referendum of the legal voters in the annexed areas. [1] The power of annexation may be delegated by the General Assembly to the municipalities of the State and this has been done by Code (1957), Art. 23A, sec. 19. The delegation of the power of annexation to the municipal corporations of the State is not full and complete, but is limited by the provisions of the statute. Subparagraph (a) of Section 19 provides: The legislative body, by whatever name known, of every municipal corporation in this State may enlarge the corporate boundaries thereof as in this subheading provided; but this power shall apply only as to land which is contiguous and adjoining to the existing corporate area. (Emphasis supplied). It is apparent from the provisions of subparagraph (a) that the power delegated by the General Assembly was not coincident to its own powers. The remaining subsections of Section 19 limit the exercise by the municipal corporation of the delegated power to annex contiguous land. Subsection (b) provides that a proposal for change may be initiated by resolutions regularly introduced into the legislative body of the municipal corporation, in accordance with the usual requirements and practices applicable to its legislative enactments, and also in conformity with the several requirements contained in subsections (b) and (c) of Section 13 of this sub-title (the subsection in regard to amendments of municipal charters [2] ). It further provides that the consent for the proposal must be obtained from not less than 25% of the persons residing in the area to be annexed and who are registered voters in the county election and from the owners of not less than 25% of the assessed valuation of the real property located in the area to be annexed. It is then provided: The resolution shall describe by a survey of courses and distances, and may also describe by landmarks and other well-known terms, the exact area proposed to be included in the change, and shall contain complete and detailed provisions as to the conditions and circumstances applicable to the change in boundaries and to the residents and property within the area to be annexed.  (Emphasis supplied). Subsection (c) provides for the initiation of a proposal for annexation by a petition of 25% of the resident registered voters and of the owners of 25% of the assessed valuation of the real property located in the area to be annexed. Upon presentation of such a petition the presiding officer of the legislative body is required to verify the signatures of the required petitioners and upon such verification the presiding officer of the legislative body shall promptly cause to be introduced therein a resolution proposing the change of boundaries as requested by the petition. The resolution in form and content shall conform to the requirements of this section. (Emphasis supplied). Subsection (d) requires that notice be given and a public hearing be held in accordance with the notice given. The chief executive and administrative officer of the municipal corporation  shall cause a public notice thereof to be published not fewer than four times at not less than weekly intervals in a newspaper    of general circulation in the municipal corporation and the area to be annexed, briefly and accurately describing the proposed change and the conditions and circumstances applicable thereto. The public notices shall specify a time and place at which a public hearing will be held by the legislative body on the resolution; this hearing  shall be set for not less than fifteen (15) days after the fourth publication of the notices and shall be held either within the boundaries of the municipal corporation or within the area to be annexed. (Emphasis supplied). Subsection (e) provides that after the public hearing, the legislative body may proceed to enact the resolution in accordance with the usual requirements and practices applicable to its legislative enactments and the resolution  shall not become effective until at least 45 days following its enactment. Subsequent subsections provide for a referendum by not less than 20% of the resident registered voters in the area to be annexed, or by not less than 20% of the qualified voters of the municipal corporation, as well as for the time of the referendum, notice, form of ballots and other similar provisions. Subsection (1) prohibits the annexation of land within the corporate limits of another municipal corporation. It is entirely certain that no power is expressly granted by the General Assembly to municipal corporations to make contracts with land owners in proposed areas to be annexed to dedicate land, pay money or provide for other considerations to induce the municipal corporation to enact a resolution for the proposed annexation. Can such an extraordinary power be implied? I think not. The rule is well established in Maryland that municipal corporations have only such powers as the General Assembly confers upon them and the powers delegated are to be strictly construed. As Judge Johnson, for the Court, stated in Hanlon v. Levin, 168 Md. 674, 677, 179 Atl. 286 (1935): [M]unicipal corporations have only such powers as have been conferred upon them by the Legislature, and these are to be strictly construed. To doubt such power in a given case is to deny its existence. Rushe v. Hyattsville, 116 Md. 122, 81 A. 278; Heiskell v. Baltimore, 65 Md. 125, 4 A. 116; Baltimore v. Gill, 31 Md. 375; St. Mary's Industrial School v. Brown, 45 Md. 310. In Hanlon, this Court held that the Board of Park Commissioners of Baltimore City had no power to lease for a radio broadcasting station property acquired by the city which had become part of the city parks, and that the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, itself, had no power to enter such a lease even when the land to be leased was no longer needed for a public use without complying with its charter provisions in regard to newspaper advertisement and without embodying the lease in an ordinance to be referred by the City Council to the Board of Estimates for investigation and report. Hanlon has been cited with approval and its summary of the Maryland law above quoted was again approved in Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Canton Co. of Baltimore City, 186 Md. 618, 631, 47 A.2d 775 (1946); Duvall v. Lacy, 195 Md. 138, 143, 73 A.2d 26 (1950); Mayor & Council of Mount Airy v. Sappington, 195 Md. 259, 263, 73 A.2d 449 (1950). Annexation most surely can readily be accomplished without the making of a contract with the owners of land in the annexed area for the dedication of land and payment of money to the annexing municipality. The annexations of 1918 and of 1888, of additional areas to Baltimore City were accomplished without such contracts. See McGraw v. Merryman, supra and Daly v. Morgan, supra . It is not a necessary incident to the exercise of the express power to annex to imply the power to make a contract with the owners of land in the annexed area to dedicate land or pay money to the annexing municipality to induce the annexation. On the contrary, it would be, in my opinion, unreasonable and even contrary to the public interest to imply such a power. As will later be developed in more detail, the great weight of authority in this country supports the doctrine that contracts to exercise or not to exercise governmental power by municipalities are against public policy and, therefore, null and void. It is apparent that the courts should not imply a power the exercise of which reaches a result which is against public policy. We have held that the provisions of Articles 23A and 66B of the Maryland Code in regard to annexation and zoning, respectively, should be read together. As Judge (now Chief Judge) Hammond said, for the Court, in Mayor & Aldermen of City of Annapolis v. Kramer, 235 Md. 231, 234, 201 A.2d 333 (1964): It would appear that the provisions on the same subject matter of Articles 23A and 66B of the Code must be read together and be applied when a municipality zones for the first time in the course of annexing land. We cited Kramer with approval and applied the language above quoted in Beshore v. Town of Bel Air, 237 Md. 398, 206 A.2d 678 (1965). Beshore involved a resolution of the Town of Bel Air to annex approximately 68 acres of contiguous land. The resolution also rezoned the annexed area. In contending that the resolution was invalid because it combined both annexation and rezoning in one resolution, the complaining taxpayers asserted, inter alia, not only that the annexation and rezoning could not be combined in one resolution but, if they could, the rezoning was included in the resolution by reason of an agreement with the owners of the annexed area. We held that since the subject matter of the provisions of Articles 23A and 66B was the same, they should be construed together (following Kramer, supra ) and further that there was no evidence either in the resolution or otherwise, that there was any agreement between the property owners of the annexed area and the municipality so that our prior holdings considering zoning by contract were not applicable. Judge Sybert, for the Court, indicated that such prior decisions holding contract zoning to be invalid would have been applicable, if there were in fact such a contract. However, the question as to whether the rule against contract zoning was applicable to initial zoning of newly annexed property was left undecided by the Court. It is clear to me that our prior decisions holding that agreements for rezoning between a land owner and a municipality are invalid are applicable to the initial zoning of newly annexed land and, further, that the principle of those cases is equally applicable to the exercise of the power of annexation, itself. Baylis v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 219 Md. 164, 148 A.2d 429 (1959), squarely presented for the first time the issue of whether the City of Baltimore had the power to condition the rezoning of land upon the execution of an agreement with the owner of that land. In Baylis (contrary to the situation in the present case) the agreement was set forth in full in the rezoning ordinance. This Court held that the ordinance and agreement were null and void. The Court, in addition to reliance upon the theory that such contracts would destroy the uniformity of districts required by Code, Article 66B, sec. 2, also relied upon the well established doctrine that the contract was nugatory because a municipality is not able to make agreements which inhibit its police powers. Judge Henderson, for the Court, in Baylis pointed out that the decision in that case had been foreshadowed by the statement of Judge Hammond in his opinion for the Court in Wakefield v. Kraft, 202 Md. 136, 149-50, 96 A.2d 27 (1953), as follows: The County Commissioners are not a Planning Board, nor have they the right to exact conditions, or provisions of a particular use in return for deciding that the public interest justified that an area should be zoned commercial. For a full discussion of contract zoning see Rathkopf, The Law of Zoning and Planning (3rd Ed.) Ch. 74:6-23. The substantial weight of authority apparently supports our decision in Baylis. We have cited Baylis with approval and followed its holding in Rose v. Paape, 221 Md. 369, 157 A.2d 618 (1960); Carole Highlands Citizens Ass'n., Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners of Prince George's County, 222 Md. 44, 158 A.2d 663 (1960); and Pressman v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 222 Md. 330, 160 A.2d 379 (1960). The doctrine of Baylis is now well established in the law of Maryland. See Trager, Contract Zoning, 23 Md. L. Rev. 121 (1963). If contracts between property owners and municipalities to rezone are invalid, a fortiori, similar contracts to induce annexation are invalid. Not only have we already held that the provisions of Articles 23A and 66B are in pari materia and are to be construed together ( Kramer and Beshore, supra ), but there is far more reason, in my opinion, to permit contract rezoning than there is to permit contract annexation. In zoning the power of the municipality to make special exceptions and to grant variances is specifically given by the Enabling Act and it is contemplated that individual adjustments and variations are necessary and proper for a smooth and just application of the zoning laws. No such power is given or contemplated by Article 23A, sec. 19, regarding annexation. There is no suggestion in section 19 that there should be special exceptions or variances in annexing land. It might well be that a Court could sustain contract zoning as a practical equivalent to a special exception or variance, [3] but decline to sustain contract annexation. In the present case, the annexation resolution and the rezoning ordinance were all part of the same package deal. Although the form of two separate ordinances was faithfully maintained, it is clear from the evidence that Brookeville could not practically carry out the project without the passage of both ordinances. The Planning Commission reported separately on both annexation and rezoning on the same day, January 12, 1961. The Commission had no objection whatever to the annexation resolution and recommended its passage by the City Council, without qualification or condition. In regard to the rezoning ordinance it recommended a temporary rezoning to R-S pending its investigation of recreational uses. In short, there was no objection or contrary evidence whatsoever to the annexation resolution; delayed action was recommended by the Planning Commission on the rezoning to R-20 and this recommendation resulted in the delay on both ordinances. It was to overcome this objection to the rezoning to R-A and to obtain favorable action on both the annexation resolution and the companion ordinance rezoning the 3.55 acre tract to R-A, that the contract of January 15, 1962 was negotiated and executed by the parties. Favorable action on the rezoning ordinance is carefully left out of the contract, but, obviously there was the tacit understanding that favorable rezoning action was an essential part of the consideration for the contract. When the contract was executed, such favorable action followed forthwith. It is clear to me that this presents a case of contract rezoning and the doctrine set forth in Baylis applies. The present case is to be distinguished from Pressman where an illegal contract was made with the Planning Commission to obtain its approval of the proposed rezoning ordinance, but there was no contract with the City of Baltimore itself and no contract was mentioned in the rezoning ordinance. In the case at bar, the contract is made directly with Rockville and it definitely caused the favorable passage of the rezoning ordinance. The majority opinion relies upon the decision of the Supreme Court of Colorado in City of Colorado Springs v. Kitty Hawk Develop. Co., 154 Colo. 535, 392 P.2d 467 (1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 647 (1965) and states: Since a municipality may or may not annex as the exercise of its honest judgment dictates, it seems only logical that it may, as prerequisite to granting annexation, impose reasonable, bona fide conditions for the public good and public welfare if they are related to the area to be annexed and nearby areas. As I see it, a far different problem is presented by the case at bar. The issue in the present case is whether the municipality may lawfully contract with a property owner to annex that property owner's land upon the dedication of a part of the land to be annexed to public use and the payment of a substantial sum of money to the municipality if land not in the area to be annexed is not acquired by the property owners and put to a particular use. In the present case there is no prior ordinance of Rockville setting up a uniform condition for all annexations as was the situation in Kitty Hawk. On the contrary, the purported contract in the case at bar was negotiated on an ad hoc basis. Indeed, as will be more fully developed later, even this purported contract was never made a part of the resolution for annexation, and it has never been approved by an ordinance or resolution by Rockville. Our predecessors in Schriver v. Mayor & City Council of Cumberland, 169 Md. 286, 288-89, 181 Atl. 443 (1935) clearly indicated that promises of public officials in regard to the extension of facilities in an area to be annexed to induce approval by the voters of the proposed annexation, but not contained in the apposite statutes, could not be enforced or recognized by the Courts. Chief Judge Bond stated: The petitioners consider, however, that extension of the supply into their district was assured by promises made to obtain votes for approval of the annexation, and in understandings, by the municipal officials and the assembly at the time of passage of the acts, that the extension should be made, and made forthwith, by means of the money from sale of the bonds. But such promises or understandings could not serve as sources of legal rights and obligations, added to the actual provisions of the statutes. In ascertaining the rights and obligations of the parties, the courts are confined to the statutes passed to create them, and promises or understandings not made law by inclusion in the statutes have no existence that the courts can recognize. Smith v. State, 66 Md. 215, 217, 7 A. 49; Riggin v. Wyatt, 139 Md. 476, 478, 115 A. 755. The holding in Kitty Hawk does not, in my opinion, support the holding by the majority that the purported contract is valid and lawful. It should be observed that the decision by the majority of the Supreme Court of Colorado in Kitty Hawk in sustaining in that State the delegation of power to the municipality to provide by ordinance for a condition applicable to annexations may well be incorrect. See the vigorous dissenting opinion of Justice Moore, 392 P.2d 473, et seq. Cf. Denver v. Denver Buick, Inc., 141 Colo. 121, 347 P.2d 919 (1959). The decision of the majority in Kitty Hawk appears to represent a minority position. See, e.g., Pioneer Trust and Savings Bank v. Village of Mount Prospect, 22 Ill.2d 375, 176 N.E.2d 799 (1961); Miller v. City of Beaver Falls, 368 Pa. 189, 82 A.2d 34 (1951). In my opinion, the holding of the Court in County Council for Montgomery County v. Lee, 219 Md. 209, 148 A.2d 568 (1959) does not support the holding in the majority opinion in this case. In Lee, the General Assembly had granted to chartered counties, complete jurisdiction over streets and roads, including the power to regulate the opening of street surfaces and the location, construction, repair and use of streets and highways. The chartered counties were given power to enact local laws providing appropriate administration    remedies and sanctions for the administration and enforcement of such ordinances   . See Code (1957), Article 25A, sec. 5 (K) and (T). Pursuant to this grant of power, Montgomery County  a chartered county  adopted a County Code in which one section provided that the total cost of roads and streets constructed by the county for public use, including rights-of-way and easements would be paid by the county but that the entire initial cost of grading and constructing roads and streets for the benefit of individual and corporate taxpayers must be borne by them when the permit to them is issued. The applicant for such a permit was required to post a performance bond in the amount of the estimated total cost of the project. The permit, however, could not issue unless the right-of-way had been acquired by the county or had been dedicated to public use. The permit in question was granted to an individual taxpayer for his private benefit in the subdivision he was developing and provided that he should obtain the necessary easement for the construction, operation and maintenance of Outlet W-1. The developer never did supply this right-of-way or easement and the county proceeded against the performance bond. The situation in Lee is far different from that presented in the pending case. In Lee the entire cost of all street openings and initial constructions for private benefit was imposed upon the developer by ordinance passed pursuant to the power delegated by the General Assembly and the condition of the permit merely carried that requirement of the ordinance into effect. In the case at bar not only has no such power been delegated, but no ordinance authorizing the purported contract has ever been passed and the purported contract was not executed pursuant to any prior ordinance. The same comments are applicable to the other cases cited on this point in the majority opinion. It is clear to me that the General Assembly never delegated the power to Rockville to make the purported contract in question, either expressly or by implication, and consequently the purported contract is ultra vires that municipal corporation and is null, void and of no effect.