Opinion ID: 1760281
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Repeal of Amendment 74 by Amendment 78

Text: For its next point, the City claims that Amendment 78 did not repeal the uniform rate of 25 mills to be used for maintenance and operation of the schools in toto as provided under Amendment 74 but only worked a slight modification of it. The City contends that under Amendment 78, any revenues generated by applying the 25-mill uniform rate against the increment value of the property in the redevelopment district should be used to pay the bond debt of the district. In making its argument, the City relies on the following language in Amendment 78: any increase in the assessed value of property in the area obtaining after the effective date of the ordinance approving the redevelopment plan for the district shall be used to pay any indebtedness incurred for the redevelopment project. . . . Ark. Const. amend. 78 § 1(d). The City adds that Amendment 78 contains a general repealer clause that any provision of the Arkansas Constitution in conflict with this section is repealed. See Ark. Const. amend. 78 § 1(f). The City adds three more arguments. It emphasizes that Amendment 78 includes an express exclusion for debt service millage but that it does not expressly exclude the 25 mills set out in Amendment 74. Secondly, the City claims that in order to accomplish Amendment 78's and the Redevelopment Act's goal of financing redevelopment projects, it is essential to use the 25 mills for project financing as this millage would almost always be the lionshare of the millage available for the financing. The City also urges that statutory changes to the Redevelopment Act made by the General Assembly in 2003 and in 2005 expressly show that the General Assembly intended to include Amendment 74's 25 mills for project financing, when proposing Amendment 78 to the voters of this state as an initiated act. It urges, as a final point, that Act 2231 of 2005, which changed the definition of total ad valorem rate by adding State in an attempt to remove any ambiguity that the 25 mills were available for redevelopment financing, should be considered in determining the original intent of the General Assembly in submitting Amendment 78 to a vote of the people. This court has been absolutely clear about our role in interpreting the Arkansas Constitution: The people of the State, in the rightful exercise of their sovereign powers, ordained and established the constitution; and the only duty devolved upon this court is to expound and interpret it. Lake View, 351 Ark. at 54, 91 S.W.3d at 484 (quoting State v. Floyd, 9 Ark. 302, 315 (1849)). We have specifically defined the standards we use when interpreting the Arkansas Constitution to be as follows: When interpreting the constitution on appeal, our task is to read the laws as they are written, and interpret them in accordance with established principles of constitutional construction. It is this court's responsibility to decide what a constitutional provision means, and we will review a lower court's construction de novo. We are not bound by the decision of the trial court; however, in the absence of a showing that the trial court erred in its interpretation of the law, that interpretation will be accepted as correct on appeal. Language of a constitutional provision that is plain and unambiguous must be given its obvious and common meaning. Neither rules of construction nor rules of interpretation may be used to defeat the clear and certain meaning of a constitutional provision. Smith v. Sidney Moncrief Pontiac, Buick, GMC Co., 353 Ark. 701, 720, 120 S.W.3d 525, 537 (2003) (internal citations omitted). Amendment 74 specifically provides: In order to provide quality education, it is the goal of this state to provide a fair system for the distribution of funds. Ark. Const. art. 14, § 3(a). It further provides: There is established a uniform rate of ad valorem property tax of twenty-five (25) mills to be levied on the assessed value of all taxable real, personal, and utility property in the state to be used solely for maintenance and operation of the schools. Ark. Const. art. 14, § 3(b) (emphasis added). Amendment 78 was enacted for an entirely different purpose, which is to resuscitate and revive blighted communities within cities or counties by means of redevelopment projects. Amendment 78 reads in pertinent part: (d) The General Assembly may provide that the ad valorem taxes levied by any taxing unit, in which is located all or part of an area included in a redevelopment district, may be divided so that all or part of the ad valorem taxes levied against any increase in the assessed value of property in the area obtaining after the effective date of the ordinance approving the redevelopment plan for the district shall be used to pay any indebtedness incurred for the redevelopment project; provided, however, there shall be excluded from the division all ad valorem taxes for debt service approved by voters in a taxing unit prior to the effective date of this amendment. Ark. Const. amend. 78, § 1(d). The Amendment also says that [a]ny provision of the Constitution of the State of Arkansas in conflict with this section is repealed insofar as it is in conflict with this amendment. Ark. Const. amend. 78, § 1(f). We turn then to the plain language of the two constitutional amendments. It is clear that Amendment 74 specifically mandates that a uniform rate of 25 mills be collected in each school district for funding education and that the tax levied be used  solely for maintenance and operation of the schools. Ark. Const. art. 14, § 3 (emphasis added). Amendment 78, on the other hand, provides that once a redevelopment district is formed by a city or county, [t]he General Assembly may provide for a tax to be levied to fund the redevelopment project. Ark. Const. amend. 78 § 1(d) (emphasis added). The language used in Amendment 78 is permissive and authorizes the General Assembly to provide for the funding of a redevelopment project by means of a formula, which includes the various taxes levied by local taxing units. The critical stumbling block we see with the City's interpretation of Amendment 78 is that the voters of this state were never put on notice that Amendment 78 would effectively undo Amendment 74 by funding redevelopment projects with a portion of the uniform rate of 25 mills that had previously been designated solely for the maintenance and operation of the public schools. In City of Hot Springs v. Creviston, 288 Ark. 286, 713 S.W.2d 230 (1986), this court held that if the authors of a constitutional amendment had meant for it to repeal a particular section of a constitutional article, they would have said so. We said: If the authors of Amendment 62 meant to repeal Section 1 of Article 16, they should and would have said so. In no other way could the voters have been put on notice that by adopting Amendment 62 they were destroying a safeguard that had existed for more than a century. See City of Hot Springs, 288 Ark. at 293, 713 S.W.2d at 231. Similarly, in this case, if the authors of Amendment 78 had meant for that Amendment to repeal Amendment 74 in any form or fashion, they would have said so explicitly. Otherwise, the voters, who had just four years previously passed Amendment 74 to set a uniform rate for the funding of public schools in hopes of achieving adequacy and substantial equality in public education, could not have been put on notice that by adopting Amendment 78, they were removing a portion of the money used for that very purpose. Amendment 78 does not do that, and we hold that it does not amend Amendment 74 in any respect. We specifically note on this point that Amendment 78 expressly excepts Article XVI, § 14 (formerly Amendment 59) from any impact caused by an increase in property values within the Redevelopment District. Ark. Const. amend. 78, § 1(e). It would have been an easy matter for the drafters of the amendment to have also stated that the 25 mills would be part of the TIF formula, if that was their intent, but they did not do this. Nor do we believe that the general repealer clause included in Amendment 78 creates a conflict with Amendment 74. When this court analyzes an espoused repeal by a general repealer clause, we do so in accordance with our statutory construction rules regarding repeal by implication: A statute of a general nature does not repeal a more specific statute unless there is a plain, irreconcilable conflict between the two. Thus, the treatment of a general repealer clause does not differ from the rules applicable to a repeal by implication. The fundamental rule of that doctrine is that a repeal by implication is not favored and is never allowed except when there is such an invincible repugnancy between the provisions that both cannot stand. Repeal by implication is not a favored device in our interpretation of statutes, and we must construe all statutes relating to the same subject matter together. [A] repeal by implication is accomplished where the Legislature takes up the whole subject anew and covers the entire ground of the subject matter of a former statute and evidently intends it as a substitute, although there may be in the old law provisions not embraced in the new. Hence, the older act will be repealed if it is apparent that the latter act was intended to substitute for the prior one. Doe v. Baum, 348 Ark. 259, 274-75, 72 S.W.3d 476, 484-85 (2002) (internal citations omitted). This court is firmly convinced that a repeal by implication in the case of constitutional provisions is even more suspect and difficult to achieve because we are dealing with the will of the voters and not the intent of legislators, who better understand the niceties of repealing and amending statutes. Even so, applying these rules for statutory construction to the construction and interpretation of the constitutional amendments involved in this case, this court first looks to the intent of the two constitutional amendments at issue by considering the Doe factors. Amendment 78 was passed only four years after the Arkansas voters had adopted Amendment 74 to the Arkansas Constitution. At the time Amendment 78 was adopted, the constitutionality of school funding for the Arkansas public school system was the subject of the Lake View litigation. In that climate, it is unreasonable to conclude that the voters intended to divert money exclusively dedicated for school purposes under Amendment 74 to fund redevelopment projects under Amendment 78. The purposes of the two amendments were categorically different. We conclude that an invincible repugnancy between Amendment 74 and Amendment 78 does not exist so as to cause a repeal by implication. We note, as a collateral point, that funding for the City's redevelopment project was considered feasible with an applicable ad valorem rate of 3.16 mills even without the inclusion of the 25 mills authorized by Amendment 74 and that the redevelopment-district bonds apparently have been sold. Thus, the redevelopment project was funded and the bonds sold without the use of the 25 mills under Amendment 74, which the City now argues is vital and essential for funding the TIF district. We hold that Amendment 78 did not alter Amendment 74, and we affirm the circuit court's conclusion on this point.