Opinion ID: 1901333
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The April Injunction

Text: Unlike the February injunction, the April injunction has proponents, as well as opponents. The Universities and the Joint Committee urge us to reverse the order of the trial court and dissolve the injunction. The plaintiffs, on the other hand, urge us not to disturb the injunction, but to affirm the order. Thus, as to the April injunction, there is true adversity. The sole basis for the April injunction is a single sentence: In times of proration, salaries shall not be subject to proration. As the April injunction order noted, this sentence first appeared in two statutes enacted in 1995, namely, Act No. 95-313, § 9, 1995 Ala. Acts 620; and Act No. 95-314, § 27, 1995 Ala. Acts 634 (hereinafter the 1995 directive). Act No. 95-314, § 27, amended former § 16-13-144(a). Act No. 95-313, § 9, was codified as § 16-6B-9. On its face, the language seems innocuous. However, it is the application of the 1995 directive that forms the core of this dispute. Two possible meanings have emerged with significant consequences to the parties. Under one interpretation, the language is directed to the Governor. The April injunction order explains that interpretation as follows: These statutes clearly mean that when the Governor declares proration pursuant to § 41-4-90, allotments for K-12 salaries shall be exempted from proration. That is, in computing the prorated amount of funds to K-12 entities, the [Executive Parties] must remove from the base funding to K-12 all funds which are appropriated/allocated for K-12 salaries before applying the proration percentage to whatever remaining funds are to be subjected to proration. (Emphasis added.) In other words, the Governor does not prorate funds that are allocable to salaries. This is the interpretation adopted, of course, by the plaintiffs, and, since the issuance of the Attorney General's opinion of February 28, 2001, by the Executive Parties. Under the second interpretation, the directive is to local school boards. Under this view, the Governor does not remove from the base funding to K-12 any amount representing salaries. In other words, the Governor does prorate funds that are allocable to salaries. Under this construction, the 1995 directive merely orders the local school boards not to spend state appropriations in a manner that would result in employee salaries not being paid in full. Brief of Appellants, the University of Alabama and Auburn University, at 13. Otherwise stated, the 1995 directive regulates the expenditure of funds by local school boards after the funds have been received from the State; they do not regulate how the state executive officials determine the amount of funds to distribute to local boards. The statutes are, in short, directed at local disbursement, not state budgeting. Id. at 12 (emphasis in original). Under the first interpretation, the Universities' financial burden in times of proration is heavier than under the second interpretation. Thus, in order to resolve this dispute, we need only determine whether the 1995 directive is to the Governor, or to the local school boards. Resolution of the issue requires consideration of other statutes binding on the Governor in times of proration, such as pertinent provisions of the Budget and Financial Control Act of 1932, codified as amended at Ala.Code 1975, §§ 41-4-82 to -96 (the Budget Act). Section 41-4-90 provides: No appropriations made by the Legislature shall be available for expenditures until allotted as provided for in Section 41-4-91. All appropriations, except per capita appropriations now in force or hereafter made to eleemosynary and correctional institutions and the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind, located at Talladega, Alabama, which appropriations shall remain in full force and effect and be payable and disbursed as now provided by law, are hereby declared to be maximum, conditional and proportionate appropriations, the purpose being to make appropriations payable in full in the amounts named only in the event that the estimated budget resources during each budget year of the period are sufficient to pay all of the appropriations for such year in full. The Governor shall restrict allotments to prevent an overdraft or deficit in any fiscal year for which appropriations are made by prorating without discrimination against any department, board, bureau, commission, agency, office or institution of the state, the available revenues among the various departments, boards, bureaus, commissions, agencies, offices and institutions of the state. In other words, said appropriations shall be payable in such proportion as the total sum of all appropriations bears to the total revenues estimated by the Department of Finance as available in each of said fiscal years. The purpose of this provision is to insure that there shall be no overdraft or deficit in the several funds of the state at the end of any fiscal year, and the Governor is directed and required so to administer this article to prevent any such overdraft or deficit.  (Emphasis added.) Section 41-4-96 provides in pertinent part: A refusal to perform any of the requirements of this article or an improper or illegal performance of any requirement of this article by the Governor shall make him subject to impeachment. The [A]ct was designed to make the state operate within its income. Southern Indus. Inst. v. Lee, 234 Ala. 404, 406, 175 So. 365, 366 (1937). The Executive Parties are further constrained by the Alabama Constitution, which provides in part: To prevent further deficits in the state treasury, it shall be unlawful from and after the adoption of this amendment for the state comptroller of the state of Alabama to draw any warrant or other order for the payment of money belonging to, or administered by, the state of Alabama upon the state treasurer, unless there is in the hand of such treasurer money appropriated and available for the full payment of the same. In case there is, at the end of any fiscal year, insufficient money in the state treasury for the payment of all proper claims presented to the state comptroller for the issuance of warrants, the comptroller shall issue warrants for that proportion of each such claim which the money available for the payment of all said claims bears to the whole, and such warrants for such prorated sums shall thereupon be paid by the state treasurer. At the end of each fiscal year all unpaid appropriations which exceed the amount of money in the state treasury subject to the payment of the same after the proration above provided for, shall thereupon become null and void to the extent of such excess. Any person violating any of the provisions of this amendment shall, on conviction, be punished by a fine of not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not more than two years, one or both, at the discretion of the jury trying the same, and the violation of any provisions of this amendment shall also be ground for impeachment.  Ala. Const.1901, Amend. 26 (emphasis added). As the AASB states it, the heart of the controversy between the [plaintiffs] and the Universities is the interplay between Amendment 26 and [§ 41-4-90], on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the [1995 directive]. Brief of Appellees, the AASB, at xxiv. The AASB explains the operation of proration upon the basic school-funding process as follows: [Section 41-4-90] recognizes that state governments' funding process involves various steps commencing with the passage of a budget whereby funds are `appropriated' followed then by the disbursement of these appropriations through the mechanism of `allotments.' An allotment is simply the process through which appropriated funds are `allotted' or disbursed to various departments of state government to be used for payment of such items as salaries, utilities, purchase of supplies, etc. [Section 41-4-90] recognizes that the Legislature can make appropriations in such amounts as it deems proper for state agencies but that these appropriations are conditional in the sense of being paid in full `only in the event that the estimated budget resources during each budget year of the period are sufficient to pay all of the appropriations for each year in full.' It is only when the amount appropriated by the Legislature in the budget exceeds the state's actual revenues that the Governor must intercede through the device of proration. In that instance, according to [§ 41-4-90], the Governor `shall restrict allotments to prevent an overdraft or deficit in any fiscal year for which appropriations are made....' Thus, proration relates to restricting the `allotments' of the funds which had previously been appropriated to state agencies or departments. When the Governor declares proration, he reduces the funds which are sent to the various departments; he does not reduce how these funds are ultimately disbursed to end users. In other words, in times of proration, funds which have been appropriated to state agencies to pay electric bills, salaries, or office supplies (whether earmarked or not), will be cut as a consequence of proration but the state agencies must still pay in full the utility bills, the salaries and the bills for office supplies. The parties are in agreement that historically, in times of proration, salaries paid to K-12 teachers have never been cut while the funds disbursed to the local boards to pay these salaries have been reduced.  Brief of Appellees, the AASB, at xxiv-xxvi (emphasis added). Thus, the plaintiffs concede that Amendment 26 and § 41-4-90 facially require the Executive Parties to restrict allotments `by prorating without discrimination... the available revenues among the various [state agencies].' Brief of Appellees, the AASB, at xxvi. However, they rely on dicta in two of this Court's cases, namely, Folsom v. Wynn, 631 So.2d 890 (Ala.1993), and Abramson v. Hard, 229 Ala. 2, 155 So. 590 (1934), for the proposition that proration of funding cannot be ordered ... for services which the Legislature has exempted from proration. Brief of Appellees, the AASB, at xxvi. This argument misses the point. The point is not whether the Legislature could exempt K-12 salaries from proration, but whether, in enacting the 1995 directive, it did so. The intent of the Legislature is the polestar of statutory construction. Richardson v. PSB Armor, Inc., 682 So.2d 438, 440 (Ala.1996); Jones v. Conradi, 673 So.2d 389, 394 (Ala.1995); Ex parte Jordan, 592 So.2d 579, 581 (Ala.1992). Among the parties in this action contending that the Legislature did not intend, by its 1995 directive, to authorize the Governor to exempt from proration any funds allocable to K-12 salaries is the Joint Committee. As stated above, the Joint Fiscal Committee of the Alabama Legislature moved to intervene, arguing that its intervention was necessary so that the separation of powers [might] be maintained adequately and properly and [so that] the members of the Joint Fiscal Committee [could] present the Legislature's position on these issues. The Joint Committee was permitted to intervene, and it appealed from the April injunction on behalf of the State Legislature. The Joint Committee first contends that the Legislature has the constitutional authority to direct the Governor to exclude any appropriations (salaries or otherwise) from the calculations of proration by simply amending § 41-4-90. Brief of Appellee, the Joint Committee, at 4. It insists, however, that it has not done so. In support of this contention, it cites Act No. 2000-594, 2000 Ala. Acts 1097, in which the Legislature made its appropriations for the support, maintenance and development of public education in Alabama ... for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2001 (the Appropriations Act). Section 2(a) of the Appropriations Act provides: The appropriations provided for in this act shall be paid from funds in the State Treasury to the credit of the Education Trust Fund ... and are hereby made for the support of public education in Alabama for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2001, and the appropriations herein made shall be subject to the provisions, terms, conditions and limitations of the Budget and Financial Control Act (Code of Alabama 1975, Sections 41-4-80 et seq. ), the provisions of the Budget Management Act of 1976 (Code of Alabama 1975, Sections 41-19-1 et seq.), and shall be in the amounts hereinafter specified. (Emphasis added.) In other words, appropriations for the current fiscal year are expressly subject to the proration procedures set forth in § 41-4-90, the general proration statute, which, all parties concede, requires the Governor to restrict allotments ... by prorating without discrimination... the available revenues among the various [state agencies]. There is no mention of § 16-6B-9, or § 16-13-144(a), which, the plaintiffs and the Executive Parties insist, direct the Governor to exempt from proration any funds allocable to K-12 salaries. If the Legislature had intended, as the plaintiffs and the Executive Parties contend, to provide an exemption for salaries in § 16-6B-9, or § 16-13-144(a), it could have said so when it expressly made its appropriations subject to the general proration scheme. It did not do so. The absence of any such legislative intent is buttressed by the fact that every education appropriations act since passage of the 1995 directive has contained the identical subject-to provision. See Act No. 95-748, 1995 Ala. Acts 1700; Act No. 96-770, 1996 Ala. Acts 1361; Act No. 97-856, 1997 Ala. Acts 145; Act No. 98-504, 1998 Ala. Acts 1123; and Act No. 99-434, 1999 Ala. Acts 798. Next, the Joint Committee and the Universities contend that the contexts in which the 1995 directive appears clearly demonstrate that it does not bind the Governor, but, rather, the local boards of education. We agree with this contention. We note that the 1995 directive is actually coupled with another sentence in both § 16-6B-9 and § 16-13-144(a). That sentence states: No funds shall be transferred by any board of education from salary allocations to any other expenditure or for any other purpose. (Emphasis added.) Thus, when read together, the 1995 directive and its appended counterpart state: No funds shall be transferred by any board of education from salary allocations to any other expenditure or for any other purpose. In times of proration, salaries shall not be subject to proration. (Emphasis added.) Indeed, these two sentences compose § 16-6B-9 in toto. It is clear to the objective mind that the term salaries in the 1995 directive is synonymous with the term salary allocations in the preceding sentence. Like terms in related statutes are presumed to have the same meaning, unless a different intent is manifest. Kilgore v. Swindle, 219 Ala. 378, 380, 122 So. 333, 335 (1929). Salary allocations are not made at the state level. The Joint Committee points out: Alabama has a program based budget, not a line item budget. Brief of Appellant, the Joint Committee, at 5 (emphasis added). In other words, there is no line item in the Appropriations Act for salaries. Brief of Appellants, the Regional Universities, at 85. Similarly, the plaintiffs have conceded that [w]hen the Governor declares proration, he [merely] reduces the funds which are sent to the various departments; he does not reduce how these funds are ultimately disbursed to end users. Brief of Appellees, the AASB, at xxv (emphasis added). In other words, the Executive Parties do not allocate salaries. See Act No. 95-314, § 2(b)(1)d. (The local board of education shall allocate state and local foundation program funds to each school in an equitable manner ....), codified at Ala.Code 1975, § 16-13-231(b)(1)d. The language in the sentence preceding the 1995 directive is plainly directed to any board of education, not to the Governor, or any other Executive Party, concerning a process that transpires on a local level. It logically follows that the 1995 directive, although phrased slightly differently, is aimed at the same entities, namely, any board of education, and addresses the same local process. The purpose of the 1995 directive is, therefore, to emphasize that in times of proration, local school boards may not transfer funds from salary allocations to any other expenditure or for any other purpose. Indeed, the 1995 directive is merely a restatement of a provision in the pre-1995 version of § 16-13-144(a). The pre-1995 version declared: During years in which proration is declared, local city and county boards of education shall have authority to transfer expenditures between and among line item categories, provided that no funds shall be transferred from salaries to other line item categories.  (Emphasis added.) It is undisputed that before Act No. 95-314 amended § 16-13-144(a), local school boards were not prorating salaries, but that the Governor was prorating appropriations at the State level. In light of the history of the text of § 16-13-144(a) and of the practice at the local and State levels, we regard the Legislature's passage of Act No. 95-314 as a mere reaffirmation of the prohibition against transferring funds allocated for salaries to any other expenditure. Like its pre-1995 predecessor, the 1995 directive applies to line-item transfers by the local boards. It does not apply to the activities of the Executive Parties at the State level. The Joint Committee contends that Acts No. 95-313 and 95-314 deal entirely with local boards of education in their areas of programming and budgeting and not in Section 41-4-90 which deals with the proration of state appropriations. Brief of Appellant, the Joint Committee, at 7 (emphasis in original). Consideration of the 1995 directive in the context of the acts in which it was included supports this contention. For example, as indicated in the title, Act No. 95-313, the Education Accountability Act, was enacted, among other things, to establish an accountability plan which shall be overseen by the State Board of Education; ... to establish certain requirements for the development of school budgets and to provide that school allocations shall be budgeted and expended at the classroom level; [and] to restrict the use of funds allocated for salaries.  (Emphasis added.) The first sentence in § 16-13-144(a) is addressed to the local board[s] of education. Specifically, it states: No local board of education shall spend or obligate itself to spend more money in any fiscal year than the estimate of income available to that board of education for that year, plus balances on hand at the beginning of the fiscal year, which estimate shall be approved by the State Superintendent of Education, if the excess expenditure or excess obligation to spend results in a deficit for that fiscal year.... The next subsection, § 16-13-144(b), is also directed to local board[s] of education, providing a penalty for violation of subsection (a). It authorizes the State Board of Education to reduce in the succeeding fiscal year the allotment from the Foundation Program Fund to which the local board of education is otherwise entitled an amount equal to one-fourth of the deficit. Subsection (c) is directed to local superintendent[s], providing penalties for purposely misrepresent[ing] to the local board of education or to the State Superintendent of Education ... the amount of the deficit or obligations outstanding of his or her local board of education. In construing statutes, this Court does not interpret provisions in isolation, but considers them in the context of the entire statutory scheme. Ex parte Employees' Retirement Sys. of Alabama, 644 So.2d 943, 945 (Ala.1994); Alabama Farm Bureau Mut. Cas. Ins. Co. v. City of Hartselle, 460 So.2d 1219, 1225 (Ala.1984); Darks Dairy, Inc. v. Alabama Dairy Comm'n, 367 So.2d 1378, 1380 (Ala.1979) (courts must look to the entire Act instead of isolated phrases or clauses). Considering the 1995 directive in the context of the acts in which it appeared compels the conclusion that it speaks, not to the Governor, but to the local school boards. [5] Had the Legislature intended to remove K-12 salaries from the base amount to be prorated by the Governor, it could easily have said so. It did not do so, however, and we are not at liberty to rewrite the statutes. Reed v. Board of Trustees for Alabama State Univ., 778 So.2d 791, 794 (Ala.2000); Pool v. State, 570 So.2d 1260, 1263 (Ala.Crim.App.), aff'd, 570 So.2d 1263 (Ala.1990). In short, the trial court erred in its construction of the 1995 directive and in enjoining the Executive Parties on the basis of that construction. The April 6 order is, therefore, reversed.