Court Opinion

ID: 9810435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:50:02.430343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:55.279469
License: Public Domain

Ct.aR.tt, C. L,
concurring: The requirement of the Constitution (Art. IX, sec. 3) that the “public schools shall be maintained at least four months in every year” (besides making the county commissioners in any county failing to do this indictable), and the prohibition in the Constitution (Art. V, sec. 1) that the State and county taxation shall not exceed 66% cents upon the $100, are both imperative. There should have been at no time any difficulty in enforcing both. The trouble has been to find between the amount levied for State taxes, when added to that required for four-months schools, and the 66% cents limitation, a margin of taxation large enough to defray the necessary expenses of the county. In thirty-eight counties such margin is large enough to provide for necessary county expenses, but in fifty-nine counties it is not.
The error has been in assuming that in such case the necessary expenses of the county came first. Such is not the mandate of the Constitution. The maintenance of schools for four months in each county is imperatively commanded. If the margin left is not sufficient to raise enough money to de*188fray the necessary expenses of the county, taxes for that purpose can be levied, without a vote of the people, by approval of the General Assembly. Const., Art. V, sec. 6, and Art. X, sec. 7; Vaughan v. Commissioners, 117 N. C., 429. That permission has been, practically, though perhaps not very explicitly, given by the statutes authorizing and requiring county- commissioners to provide for the county purposes named in the laws concerning them.