Opinion ID: 1152402
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Court of Appeals' Analysis Rebutted

Text: In the present case, however, the Court of Appeals, reached the opposite conclusion, finding that the New Mexico legislative retirement plan violated Article IV, Section 10. Udall, 118 N.M. at 511, 882 P.2d at 552. The Court of Appeals defined the term compensation as something given or received as an equivalent for services, id. (referencing a dictionary definition), and concluded that the retirement benefits were something given in return for a legislator's years of service. However, in defining the term compensation and applying this definition to the retirement benefits, the Court of Appeals did not consider the contingent nature of retirement benefits as identified by the other jurisdictions that addressed this issue. To the contrary, the Court of Appeals expressly rejected the remoteness approach adopted by these other jurisdictions. As support for rejecting this remoteness analysis, the Court identified several points that it believed distinguished Campbell, Brown, and Reeves from the present challenge. However, after reviewing the points of distinction identified by the Court of Appeals, we conclude that the remoteness analysis employed in Campbell, Brown, and Reeves is the correct approach and is dispositive in this case. First, the Court of Appeals distinguished the Campbell case based on its use of historical analysis. The Court of Appeals suggested that, in upholding the West Virginia legislative retirement plan under the original provision, the Campbell court relied solely on a historical analysis of the terms allowance or emolument based on the prevailing conditions at the time their constitution was originally adopted. Udall, 118 N.M. at 518, 882 P.2d at 559. Thus the Court of Appeals found that the Campbell court's holding regarding the scope of the terms allowance and emolument in the original provision was limited to the historical context found in West Virginia. Id. The Court of Appeals then suggested that the Campbell court ultimately concluded that pension plans were not too remote to constitute compensation under a modern and broadened view of the term and were therefore unconstitutional. Id. However, the Court of Appeals misconstrued Campbell. As noted above, the Campbell court was faced with two separate questions, first whether the legislative retirement plan was constitutional under the original constitutional provision, and second whether the plan remained constitutional after the constitutional provision was amended by abandoning the original language and creating a Legislative Compensation Commission to control legislative salaries. Campbell, 202 S.E.2d at 373. The court concluded that the plan did not violate the original constitutional provision but that it did violate the amended provision. In examining the constitutionality of the plan prior to the amendment, the court conducted a two-pronged examination. It first looked to whether the original framers of the constitution intended to bar legislative retirement plans. Id. at 374-75. The court concluded that there was no evidence supporting this intent. It then went on to examine how other courts had interpreted similar constitutional provisions and, by applying that precedent, found the plan constitutional. Id. at 375-77. Accordingly, the court reached its conclusion that retirement plans were too remote and contingent to constitute allowances or emoluments under the original provision by looking to the law established by other jurisdictions rather than relying solely on a historical analysis of the intent of the framers of the West Virginia Constitution, as suggested by the Court of Appeals. See id. at 375 (This Court is persuaded that in the absence of evidence that it was the intent of the framers ... to prohibit pension plans..., our Constitution should be interpreted in conformity with the great weight of precedent from other jurisdictions....). The Court of Appeals also pointed to the Campbell court's rejection of the legislative pension plan under the amended constitutional provision as demonstrating that retirement plans constitute compensation under a modern and broadened reading of the term. Udall, 118 N.M. at 518, 882 P.2d at 559. However, the amendment substantially altered the restrictions that were laid out in the original provision. As a result, the amended provision differed considerably from Article IV, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution, which had paralleled the original provision. In analyzing the newly amended provision, the Campbell court was compelled to construe the terms of the amendment in light of the recorded legislative history and popular sentiment surrounding the amendment and the retirement plan already in existence before the amendment. The court held that there [was] persuasive evidence that the amendment ... was, at least in part, propelled by that controversy [generated by the legislative retirement plan]. Campbell, 202 S.E.2d at 378. It therefore found that the amendment was specifically created to govern pension plans in addition to setting legislative salaries. Thus the court's approach to the amended provision does not represent a modern reading of the term compensation, but instead represents an analysis of an entirely new constitutional requirement with distinct factual underpinnings. In this case, however, we are not faced with a recent amendment to the constitution specifically directed at controlling legislative retirement plans. As with the first part of the Campbell court's analysis, we are examining whether the Plan is constitutional under a provision of the New Mexico Constitution essentially unchanged since its creation. Accordingly, we find that the Campbell court's analysis of retirement benefits under its original constitutional provision is directly on point to the issues before us and that its subsequent discussion of the amended provision is not relevant to our analysis. The Court of Appeals also disregarded the Brown and Reeves line of cases, finding them inapplicable to the present case. The Court of Appeals identified two points of distinction which it believed rendered these cases inapposite. However, our review of these points leads us to conclude that the cases are applicable to, and in fact dispositive of, the issues in the present dispute. The first distinction the Court of Appeals identified was that Brown and Reeves addressed a different constitutional provision, which prevented a legislator from assuming a political office if the Legislature had increased the emoluments of that office during the legislator's term. The Court of Appeals noted that public policy favors providing opportunity to seek public office and that the constitutional provisions in those cases created prohibitions on public service which were contrary to that public policy. Udall, 118 N.M. at 517, 882 P.2d at 558. Accordingly, the Court took the position that the constitutional provisions in Brown and Reeves should be strictly construed to limit restrictions on seeking and holding office, whereas Article IV, Section 10 should not. Id. (quoting Brown, 787 S.W.2d at 45). However, the Court of Appeals failed to appreciate that, while New Mexico's constitutional limit on legislative compensation is not directly aimed at restricting access to public office, it certainly has that practical effect. A direct consequence of our reliance on a part-time, citizen-based Legislature is that an individual who wishes to hold public office in the Legislature must leave work for two months and live in Santa Fe on the legislative per diem allowance. However, it is the grass-roots, populist nature of our Legislature that is its defining characteristic, as well as one of its strongest assets, and any constitutional provision which has the effect of limiting the citizens' access to office should be narrowly construed as if it directly restricted the right to seek and hold public office. Accordingly, the presumptions employed in Brown and Reeves are equally applicable in this case. As a second point of distinction, the Court of Appeals noted that the constitutional provisions in Brown and Reeves were directed at removing the incentive for an individual legislator to increase the emoluments of another public office with the improper motive of subsequently assuming that office at a higher salary. Id. The Court suggested, however, that the prospect of enjoying the fruits of any improper motive was extremely remote or contingent for the individual legislators in Brown and Reeves, whereas in the present case the likelihood of the members of the Legislature as a whole enjoying the benefits of the retirement package would be a virtual certainty. Id. at 517-18, 882 P.2d at 558-59 (noting that the force of the improper motivation decreases as the likelihood of enjoying the benefit decreases). In other words, the Court of Appeals contrasted the remoteness of the benefit to an individual under the constitutional provisions at issue in Brown and Reeves with the remoteness of the benefit to the Legislature as a whole under Section 10 of Article IV. However, this distinction is unwarranted. First, Article IV, Section 10 is specifically directed at individual legislators, setting out what compensation [e]ach member of the legislature shall receive. The very language of the provision directs us to look to the nature of the benefit that inures to an individual legislator. In addition, as we noted above, every presumption is indulged in favor of the validity and regularity of the Legislature's enactments. Atencio, 90 N.M. at 788, 568 P.2d at 1234. While it is within the province of this Court to determine whether a benefit to a legislator constitutes improper compensation under the Constitution, we will not assume that the Legislature as a whole acted under improper motivations absent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to the contrary. Id. The proper focus is therefore on the remoteness or contingency of the benefit to an individual legislator and not to the Legislature as a whole. After examining the contentions raised by the Court of Appeals, we conclude that the Court erred in failing to consider the remoteness analysis employed in Brown, Reeves, and Campbell. We find that these cases are in fact directly on point in the present dispute, and we adopt the analysis utilized by the courts in these cases.