Court Opinion

ID: 6532842
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-19 20:23:05.220267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:55:24.669699
License: Public Domain

HEALY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I disagree with the holding of the majority that section 2(a) of chapter 22, Alaska Session Laws of 1953, nullifies the effect here of the Alaska General Savings Statute, section 19-1-1, Alaska Compiled Laws 1949. The relevant provisions of the latter are quoted below.1 It is not at all *296clear that it was the legislative intent to wipe out the liability of those in the situation of appellees for unpaid taxes levied for the years 1949 through 1952, but rather that section 2(a) had another and different purpose.
Significantly, the history of the 1953 legislation shows that section 2 of the original bill was deleted in the course of the bill’s consideration. That section in unmistakable terms had forgiven and abrogated all pre-1953 taxes. Concurrently, the phrase “and abrogating and repealing all accrued and unpaid taxes levied thereunder” was deleted from the bill’s title. Thus the legislature had before it in the original bill clear language which would have forgiven the taxes here in question. It chose, instead, to reject the language.
In material part section 2(a) of the Act as finally passed reads:
“Section 2. Section 1 of this Act shall not be applicable to: (a) any taxes which have been levied and assessed by any municipality, school or public utility district under the provisions of Chapter 10, Session Laws of Alaska 1949, as amended, or which are levied and assessed during the current fiscal year of such municipality, school or public utility district; * *
In light of what has been said above, the section is fairly construable as intending no more than a grant to the municipalities and school and public utility districts — but not to the Territory itself — of the right to levy and collect taxes *297for the then current year, namely 1953, both before and after the repealing act had taken effect. There was a logical reason for granting this right to these local districts in that the legislature may well have felt it undesirable to interfere with their current fiscal programs, whether or not the levies for that year had yet been made. As so construed, section 2(a) is readable in pari materia with the General Savings Statute, above quoted, as not interfering with the collection of unpaid 1949-1952 taxes, either of the Territory or of the taxing districts.
As was recognized by the trial judge but is not mentioned in the majority opinion here, it is a fundamental rule of statutory construction that general savings clauses or statutes preserve rights and liabilities which have accrued under an act repealed, and that they operate to make applicable in designated situations the law as it existed before the repeal, unless such application is negatived by the express terms or clear implication of a particular repealing act.
My brothers, as I understand them, do not contend that such application is negatived by the express terms of the 1953 legislation, but rather is to be gathered by implication. To me, however, the legislation in the respects here in question is fundamentally ambiguous, both in its meaning and in the motives inspiring its enactment. Accordingly I dissent from the majority holding.

 “Effect of repeals or amendments. The repeal or amendment of any statute shall not affect an offense committed or any act done or right accruing or accrued or any action or proceeding had or commenced prior to such repeal or amendment; nor shall any penalty, *296forfeiture or liability incurred under sucb statute be released or extinguished, but the same may be enforced, continued, sustained, prosecuted and punished under the repealing or amendatory statute save as limited by the ex post facto and other provisions of the Constitution, in which event the same may be enforced, continued, sustained, prosecuted and punished under the former law as if such repeal or amendment had not been made * *