Opinion ID: 1576271
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: A Donation

Text: Because the prospect of incremental taxes is not payment in any direct sense of the word, the conveyance of the Project Site is a donation to a private corporation prohibited by § 177. Toyota's obligation to pay taxes in the future is no more than the obligation of every taxpayer. And the payment of future taxes by persons other than Toyota cannot qualify as payment on behalf of Toyota. Likewise, Toyota's promise to build a manufacturing and assembly plant in Kentucky does not qualify as sufficient to avoid § 177. While this new business adds to Kentucky's economic development and provides additional jobs to our residents, the same thing is true with every new business and every expansion of an existing business within this state. The difference between Toyota's business and any other is quantitative and not qualitative, and a quantitative difference does not suffice to satisfy the requirement for payment to the state for the transfer of state property. If we examine the published debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1890, we can only conclude that a primary motivating force behind the Kentucky Constitution of 1891 was to prevent just such legislation as that with which we are confronted. In Tabler v. Wallace, Ky., 704 S.W.2d 179, 183-4 (1985), we quoted a sampling from these debates. See Constitutional Convention of 1890, 4 Volumes. Delegate Young: `[N]o special provisions for anybody, no exemptions, but all to have the same protection and all live under the same law, and no special benefits to anybody.. . .' Vol. 3, p. 3996-97. Delegate Knott: `[L]ook at the ponderous volumes of private acts passed our Legislature within the last few years, and enumerate the horde of railroad and other corporations which have been exempted from taxation, and allowed a variety of other special privileges, while battening like vampires upon the substance of the people; all upon the specious pretext of performing public services.' Vol. 1, p. 466. The legislative declaration of a public purpose standing alone is not enough to avoid our constitutional prohibition against public grants to a private person or corporation, no matter how powerful the arguments that the public will benefit from the business conducted by the private enterprise.