Opinion ID: 1908722
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Construction and Application of Article 14

Text: As noted supra, Article 14 provides that no aid, charge, tax, burthen or fees ought to be rated or levied, under any pretense, without the consent of the Legislature. We now consider the plain meaning of the terms: rated, levied, and consent. Rated, when used as a verb with regard to money, means to allot or to value. WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY at 1032. In laws passed in the 1770s, use of the verb rate was specifically tied to moneyeither fines, taxes, or fees paid to government officials. See Chapter xx of the Acts of 1773 (providing that the sheriff shall be fined by the court's justices for certain conduct, a sum not exceeding three thousand pounds of tobacco, rating tobacco at ten shillings per hundred, to be applied towards defraying the charge of the said county); Chapter xvii of the Acts of 1782 (providing that the appointed collector of certain specified taxes must record in a book the persons rated and things assessed, to call upon the county commissioners of the tax to know the yearly valuation of property within said town, and to regulate the tax upon every hundred pounds worth of property). Levied, used as a verb, means to impose or to collect payment of money or property by legal authority or to require by authority. WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY at 715. This definition appears to have remained constant since the time Article 14 was adopted in 1776. See PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTIONS at 160 (Resolved, That the committee forbear to levy the said fines until the end of the next session of convention, and to stay all further proceedings therein.); PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTIONS at 157 (And, upon non-payment thereof may, by warrant under their hands, empower any person they shall judge proper to levy the same, by distress and sale of the goods of the offender.); PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTIONS at 256 ([A]n act of assembly passed, directing the justices of Talbot county to levy on the inhabitants of that county forty-five pounds of tobacco per tax....). The most significant term in Article 14 is consent because it is an imperative directed to the Legislature. To consent is to voluntarily give assent, to agree, or to approve. WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY at 265. Its modern meaning is consistent with its 1776 meaning. See Chapter vii, § 9 of the Acts of 1777 (providing that a male under the age of 21 or a female under the age of 16, not before married, shall not be married without the consent of the parent or guardian of every such person or else the minister be forced to pay 500 pounds current money); PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTIONS at 299 (providing, in a draft of the Declaration of Rights under consideration and later adopted with amendments, that no soldier ought to be quartered in any house in time of peace without the consent of the owner, and in time of war in such manner only as the legislature shall direct). The plain meaning of the pertinent language therefore is that payments imposed by the State should not be allotted, valued, imposed, or collected without the authorization or approval of the Legislature. The structure of the sentence is important. The Framers did not express their will in the imperative: The Legislature shall rate and levy taxes and charges. Rather, the Legislature must consent to the rate or levy of payments to the State. To read into the clause a requirement that the Legislature also must set the amount of all such payments in each instance is to depart from the Article's plain language and read into it an intent that is not evident. Our review of the available written records from the creation of Article 14 reveals no intention to impose a non-delegable duty upon the Legislature to set the amount of every government charge. Article 14 was part of the original Declaration of Rights, although it then was designated Article 10. Appellants cite notable historical texts and cases in their Brief for the proposition that the Framers intended that the Legislature be required to set the amount of all aids, charges, taxes, burdens, and fees as a retaliation against the Proprietary fee system in effect in Maryland before Independence. Having reviewed these texts and others, we conclude that, though they do provide context and illumination for our interpretation of Article 14, they do not support Appellants' argument. The Proprietary structure enforced in Maryland while it was a colony of Great Britain allowed the proprietor and his agents to set fees and charges without the approval of the officials elected by the citizens of Maryland. It was the lack of consent by the people's legislative representatives that was denounced as the evil which the Framers of the Maryland Constitution sought to remedy. Our construction of the meaning of the Article is strengthened by a statement from the Constitutional Convention in 1776 that provided instructions for the deputies representing Maryland in Congress. If reconciliation could be reached with the British crown, then the representatives should tak[e] care to secure the colonies against the exercise of the right assumed by parliament to tax them, and to alter and change their charters, constitutions, and internal polity, without their consent, powers incompatible with the essential securities of the lives, liberties, and properties of the colonists. Proceedings of the Conventions at 83. In 1775, the convention resolved unanimously that, because of the long premeditated, and [then] avowed design of the British government, to raise a revenue from the property of the colonists, without their consent, on the gift, grant, and disposition of the commons of Great Britain and other reasons, it was firmly persuaded that it [was] necessary and justifiable to repel force by force, [so did] approve of the opposition by arms, to the British troops employ[ed]. PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONVENTIONS at 17-18. Article 14 codifies the catch-phrase of the Revolution: No taxation without representation. Article 14 has undergone only one arguably substantive change since its adoption in the Constitution of 1776. At the Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851, the provision was amended from: That no aid, charge, tax, burthen, fee, or fees, ought to be set, rated or levied, under any pretense, without the consent of the legislature to That no aid, charge, tax, burthen or fees, ought to be rated or levied, under any pretense, without the consent of the Legislature, removing the word set from the provision. The records of the proceedings, committee reports, and debates of the 1850-1851 Convention offer little assistance in understanding why the change in language occurred. Apparently, the original version of Article 14 (then numbered Article 12) immediately preceding the Convention was passed out of committee without change. During the Convention proceedings, Article 14 was read aloud and no amendments were offered by the Convention members. Evidently, no debate took place. At the publication of the post-convention version of the Declaration of Rights and Constitution, however, the word set disappeared. With the removal of the word set, however, it became even plainer that the Legislature is not required to set expressly the amount of each aid, charge, tax, burden, or fee imposed by the State. Having construed Article 14 to include within its scope the telephone commission here and having found that Article 14 requires the Legislature's consent before a governmental charge or fee may be rated or levied by a body to which the power of setting the amount of the charge or fee has been delegated, we must determine whether the Legislature consented to the telephone commission at issue in this case. The Legislature enacted §§ 10-502 and 10-503, which set up the Inmate Welfare Fund and financed it by the profits derived from the sale of goods through the commissary operation and telephone and vending machine commissions. § 10-503(a)(2)(i)(1). We think this is clear evidence of the Legislature's consent to the imposition of a telephone commission. We hold, therefore, that the telephone commission charge does not violate Article 14 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. [13] iv.