Court Opinion

ID: 9747637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:24:50.207667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:25.078196
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
with whom WINCHESTER, J., joins, dissenting
¶1 I write separately from others to explain why I join the dissent's analysis of the law that governs this original proceeding.
¶12 An appropriation is a legislative act of allocating money to an agency in a sum certain. A legislative direction that limits the quantum of an agency's authority to spend money out of its appropriation for certain authorized categories is not an appropriation. It is rather an allocation formula for use of appropriated money by limiting the amount of an agency's spending for approved categories. An allocation of money from an agency's appropriation to enumerated categories does not appropriate money but rather restricts an agency's spending ability from funds that stand appropriated. Art. 6, § 12, Okl. Const.
¶3 By line-item veto the governor has the power to nullify an appropriation of money but not to invalidate a legislative direction for *1080an agency's internal allocation of its appropriated funds. Today's pronouncement stretches, sans legal warrant, the governor's line-item veto power to include legislative enactments that do not make appropriations but merely restrict an agency's freedom to spend its appropriated funds. A governor's line-item veto must be directed to an appropriation, not to a legislative direction about spending appropriated funds. When it targets a directive, it loses its legal characteristic and its constitutional force. Simply stated, it stands reduced to a nullity-an impermissible line-item veto of a legislative spending directive.1
¶4 A constitutional grant of power eannot be judicially enlarged by expanding the language of the fundamental law's grant beyond the limits of its dictionary-revealed meaning.2

. If a legislative act, which contains an appropriation to a single institution or agency, is divided into parts, the governor's power of line-item veto may not be invoked to nullify one or several severed portions of what is a single appropriation. To put it in somewhat clearer terms, a legislative division of a single appropriation of money to an institution will not provide legal support for the governor's use of line-item veto to nullify but a part or parts of an appropriation that in law stands as a single integrity. Regents of State University v. Trapp, State Auditor, 1911 OK 62, ¶ 0, syl., 13 P. 910, 28 OKl. 83.

. In re. Protest Against the Tax Levy, 1998 OK 43, 17, 959 P.2d 580, 582; Chickasha Cotton Oil Co. v. Grady County, 1936 OK 318, ¶ 18, 58 P.2d 590, 177 OKl. 240.