Court Opinion

ID: 9543321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:44:17.64477+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:08.795954
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice McWilliams
dissenting:
The majority of this Court hold that Chapter 179 of the Session Laws of 1961 is unconstitutional solely on the ground that it is repugnant to Article XX of the Constitution of Colorado. I must respectfully dissent from this conclusion and shall briefly state my reasons therefor.
It is hornbook law that the solemn acts of our General Assembly should not be struck down by the judiciary as unconstitutional unless it clearly appears that the particular act is prohibited by a specific provision in our Colorado Constitution. Furthermore, when an act of the General Assembly is subjected to the charge of unconstitutionality, such act is aided in its struggle for existence by a presumption of constitutionality, which presumption prevails unless the contrary is shown beyond a reasonable doubt. See Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company v. School District No. 1, 63 Colo. 159, 165 Pac. 260; People ex rel. Attorney General v. Barksdale, 104 Colo. 1, 87 P. (2d) 755. And in Police Protective Association of Colorado v. Warren, 101 Colo. 586, 76 P. (2d) 94, it was stated: “It is well to remember that our Constitution was not made nor adopted for any particular age or time. It was intended to serve so long as our form of government shall endure. Our purpose is not to search for reasons why a law should be held unconstitutional, but rather to accept it as constitutional, unless its repugnancy to the fundamental law clearly appears.”
The question to be resolved is: May the General Assembly create or permit the creation of an independent governmental entity of a quasi-municipal character which is organized for a limited purpose to operate within the geographical confines of • a municipality or *300home rule city, and to include said municipality or home rule city within its geographical boundaries? This question must be answered in the affirmative. In support of my conclusion, see Milheim v. Moffat Tunnel Dist. 72 Colo. 268, 211 Pac. 649; People ex rel. Setters v. Lee, 72 Colo. 598, 213 Pac. 583; People ex rel. Rogers v. Letford, 102 Colo. 284, 79 P. (2d) 274; People ex rel. Stokes v. Newton, 106 Colo. 61, 101 P. (2d) 21; Aurora v. Aurora Sanitation District, 112 Colo. 406, 149 P. (2d) 662; Anderson v. Town of Westminster, 125 Colo. 408, 244 P. (2d) 371. Also see Wilson v. Board of Trustees of Sanitary District of Chicago, 133 Ill. 443, 27 N.E. 203, cited with approval in the Milheim case; and Miami County v. City of Dayton, Ohio, 92 Ohio St. 215, 110 N.E. 726, cited with approval in the Lee case.
In my opinion the Milheim case has particular applicability to the present controversy. There the General Assembly created an independent governmental entity of a quasi-municipal nature for the purpose of building a capital improvement, and said independent governmental entity proceeded to include the City and County of Denver within its geographical boundaries. This independent governmental entity then levied a tax on all property owners within its district, including the property owners in Denver, and built a capital improvement. In the instant case we also have an independent governmental agency of a quasi-municipal character which proposes to levy a sales tax and to construct capital improvements within its geographical boundaries. True, in the Milheim case the district was organized to construct only one capital improvement, but such is certainly not a controlling fact. Surely it would appear to be highly illogical to hold that an independent governmental agency which constructs one capital improvement is constitutional, but if it proposes to build more than one capital improvement, it is thereby rendered unconstitutional.
The concept of a metropolitan area is of recent origin, *301at least in Colorado. But that metropolitan areas do exist is a fact, and not a figment of imagination. Metropolitan areas because they are metropolitan areas create metropolitan problems which suggest, at least, metropolitan action looking toward their solution. Against this backdrop the General Assembly enacted into law that which is now referred to as Chapter 179 of its Session Laws for 1961, wherein it was declared, inter alia, “ * * * that capital improvements in any part of a metropolitan area inure to the benefit of the entire area * * And the gist of the testimony of the witness Bowes offered in connection with the formation of this district was that all property within the M.C.I.D. would benefit from any capital improvement within the metropolitan area. On this type of testimony, along with the other matters of an evidentiary nature which were before it, the district court of Arapahoe County brought M.C.I.D. into being. In this connection it seems to me that the majority of this Court seek to go behind this legislative and judicial finding and to substitute therefor their view that capital improvements in a metropolitan area do not inure to the benefit of all property owners within the metropolitan area, but that capital improvements even in a metropolitan area still remain a matter of purely local municipal concern. This, in my opinion, is outside the orbit of our judicial review. But if the concept of metropolitan capital improvements is to be tested, it requires no great amount of argument to convince me that the widening of South University Boulevard, for example, is of greater benefit to residents of Arapahoe County than it is to the residents of Northwest Denver. Modern metropolitan areas are simply no respecters of historical boundary lines.
In short, Article XX in my opinion does not clearly and beyond all reasonable doubt preclude the People through their General Assembly from trying to solve a specific metropolitan problem on a metropolitan basis, *302and such being the case we should not by judicial fiat thwart their efforts in this direction.
Nor do I agree with Mr. Justice Sutton, who in a specially concurring opinion holds that Chapter 179 of the Session Laws of 1961 violates Section 35, Article V of the Colorado Constitution, which prohibits, inter alia, the General Assembly from delegating to any “special commission, private corporation or association any power to make * * * any municipal improvement * * * or to levy taxes * * *.” Any contention that M.C.I.D. is a “special commission” within the meaning of the constitutional provision is specifically negated by Aurora v. Aurora Sanitation District; Milheim v. Moffat Tunnel District; People v. Lee, People ex rel. v. Letford, supra.
Mr. Justice Sutton also states in his concurring opinion that there is a “vast difference” between M.C.I.D. and “the accepted concept of improvement districts, water districts, sanitation districts, and the like* * I am unable to perceive this “vast difference.” In fact I note a striking similarity as to their purpose and their basic method of creation and operation.