Court Opinion

ID: 9575645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:15:35.631552+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:36.500055
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
dissenting.
•The centerpiece for this decision envisions that when two admitted governmental subdivisions join together to operate an area hospital employing public resources for the citizens of the area, the resulting entity will no longer constitute a political subdivision. This is significant because the constitution of the state and the statutes enacted by the legislature provide protection to citizens who become responsible for the incurrence of obligations by governmental entities created for their benefit.
Leaving aside the advantages for the contractor who built the public facilities and the loss of control for the citizens through operation of the joint powers entity, I cannot find, in this circumstance, any justification for differentiating a political subdivision (each of the partners) from a governmental entity (the entity used for their combined public service). A governmental subdivision implies a defined territorial entity. This is clearly the result in the creation of a joint powers board when the two admitted political subdivisions join to perform a common interest public service. The entity will likely accrue financial responsibilities obligatory upon all of the citizens within the totality of their geographical area of responsibility. Residents, to get the service, will be required to provide the necessary funding to pay operational and constructional obligations.
I fail to perceive why hospital operations conducted under the purview of a joint powers board should not be accorded the same contracting protection for the citizens who are ultimately responsible as will be the case if the activity is separately operated by only one of them. There is no question that the county of Weston, exclusive of the towns of Upton and Newcastle, Wyoming, when combined with their territory, defines a specific taxpayer and political entity geographic territory and, equivalently, a statutorily-defined political subdivision to conduct a governmental function. The resulting hospital service is impressed with the public interest.
We should not misunderstand what this decision does. It accords to the citizens and taxpayers of local communities reduced protection from the conduct of any governmental activity through the usage of a joint powers board. I fail to see any providence or persuasion that the legisla*853ture intended to reduce protection for the citizenry by authorization of the creation of joint power districts. Witzenburger v. State ex rel. Wyoming Community Development Authority, 575 P.2d 1100 (Wyo.1978) cannot provide a justification for this diminution of citizenry protection from their governmental entity incurrence of obligations. Such legislative history as might be available would reflect that the active, anguished and continued legislative opposition to the entity envisioned in the litigation discussed in Witzenburger found its views authenticated by the reversal decision of the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Constitutional rejection by this court of the open ended opportunity to incur liabilities ultimately chargeable to taxpayers considered in Witzenburger forcefully denies use of that precedent to approve this decision. I would find Witzenburger philosophically determinative that combining governmental entities into a joint powers board should not reduce protection for the citizens. Overtly, a joint powers board has a prescribed geographical area constituent of the totality of its contributors. The statute requires officers whose election is accommodated by action of the constituent partners. We should not kid ourselves that joint power boards have no authority to levy and collect taxes, albeit perhaps indirectly, since the responsibilities assumed by the participating governmental parties will ratchet down upon the citizens of their respective areas if the entity fails in operation.
The anguish and concern reflected by the three-to-two majority in Witzenburger and, in particular, the comments of Chief Justice Guthrie, do not lead us further in this review than to recognize that the judgment award countenanced by this decision constitutes a debt imposed upon each citizen of the constituent joint powers partners in their operation of an indispensable hospital. The debt appropriately considered by Chief Justice Guthrie in Witzenburger is no less a debt than is now created for the citizen users of the hospital by this decision.
The question with which we are presented is not whether the state legislature can create obligations .that are not those of the state, Witzenburger, 575 P.2d at 1115, but whether the citizens of this state in 1889, by adoption of the Wyoming Constitution, provided a debt incurrence escape for modernized forms of entities used to provide general governmental services. Without regard for the new form selected for the operational entity, the taxpayer will, in one way or another, be assessed the responsibility to pay. Certainly, the very learned persons who joined together to write the Wyoming Constitution, or even the amendment permitted by a vote of the citizenry in 1970, contemplated no process where public funds and their use or misuse might be excepted from the requirement to “be audited, allowed or paid until a full itemized statement in writing, certified to under penalty of perjury, shall be filed with the officer or officers whose duty it may be to audit the same.” Wyo. Const. art. 16, § 7. If plain meaning means anything, Allied-Signal, Inc. v. Wyoming State Bd. of Equalization, 813 P.2d 214 (Wyo.1991), those drafters intended certain unescapable responsibilities for the expenditures of public funds. Surely no one would dispute that joint powers boards encompass anything but a governmental operation in the utilization of public funds.
The result in this majority’s decision is not particularly earth shaking in dollar amount. The pathway narrowing the constitutional protection afforded to our citizens is, however, of concern. We only invite ingenious ways to escape constitutional responsibility for the protection and preservation of our joint public assets.
In disagreement that this entity does not fall within the constitutional limitations and criteria for public protection, as does other governmental bodies, I respectfully dissent. The hospital management district, which is the subject matter of this litigation, should be accorded no different statutory or constitutional perspective regarding protection to the public interest than was afforded the State Highway Commission in Utah Const. Co. v. State Highway Commission, 45 Wyo. 403, 19 P.2d 951 (1933), or the University of Wyoming in Board of Trustees of University of Wyoming v. Bell, 662 P.2d *854410 (Wyo.1983) and Awe v. University of Wyoming, 534 P.2d 97 (Wyo.1975). Frankly, it will take something more than a casual mathematician or perhaps a computer-controlled political scientist to assess among the two score or more separately defined political entities which districts constitute and are controlled by the constitution as political subdivisions and which are constitutionally excepted governmental entities.
I also do not agree with this majority’s treatment of the clearly defined installment right of payment of the governmental entity. Somehow we make this a non-debt until it comes time to require taxpayer contribution. It was accurately recognized by appellant in its brief that “[t]he purpose of the constitutional provision is to protect governmental entities from improper or unsupported charges. Houtz v. Board of Commissioners, 11 Wyo. 152, 70 P. 840 (1902).”
It is interesting to recognize, as we pursue this issue of governmental responsibility and citizenry protection, that the contractor states in his brief:
However, the confirmed award will not be financed by the Board, but rather by three distinct political entities with general taxing authority. Paying a share of an award of $100,000.00 is not likely to impose an “undue” hardship on any one of them. There is no evidence whatsoever that the payment of the award would require those entities to impose a “one mill” levy for even one year, much less ten.[1]
Without any question, a governmental entity as defined and protected by the Wyoming Governmental Claims Act, Wyo.Stat. § 1-39-101 through § 1-39-120 (1988 & Supp.1992), includes “joint powers boards.” Wyo.Stat. § 1 — 39—103(a)(ii). It seems incomprehensible, since the Governmental Claims Act is obviously defined to include this entity, that we now reject usage of the installment payment provision of Wyo.Stat. § 1-39-118(c)(iv).
Consequently, I dissent.

. Once we leave the broad classifications of the state, the University of Wyoming, the State Highway Commission, the Game and Fish Commission, etc. and descend into the definable but not so certain geographical area excluding legislative districting of the county, the municipality, and the school or college district, we can then proceed into the weed and pest control districts and the sewer and water districts and down into the separate or joint governmental entities which provide hospital, recreational, water, and a considerable variety of additional community-operated public services. I think we simply fall into a hole and pull the top in after us when we attempt to define a governmental entity under joint power authorization to be something different than a governmental subdivision in order to foreclose regulations by payment and indebtedness limitations established in variant ways for the basic law of the state in the Wyoming Constitution.