Court Opinion

ID: 9847902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:09:32.187643+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:45.535969
License: Public Domain

*189Robert W. Hansen, J.
(dissenting). The clear words and plain language of the statute involved (sec. 144.05 (1)), mandate that the court order the attachment of a petitioning municipality to a metropolitan sewerage district where the qualifying requirements of the statute are judicially found to have been met. Such attachment to such district is mandatory if (1) prescribed procedures are followed, and (2) required qualifications are established.
As to the prescribed procedure to be followed, the statute provides that application for attachment is to be made as provided in sec. 66.205 (1), Stats. 1969. This statute requires that there be (1) an application by petition; (2) appropriate notice; and (3) a hearing. In the case before us, such procedural requirements were met by the petitioning municipalities.
As to the qualifying conditions for attachment to a sewerage district, the statute requires a petitioning municipality to establish that it is: (1) Located in a county with a population of 240,000 or more; (2) located within a drainage basin of a lake more than two and less than 16 square miles in area (and that such lake is within 18 miles of the sewage treatment plant of the municipality); (3) located within 10 miles of the sewerage district; and (4) has made application for attachment to the district. Upon establishing such qualifications, the petitioning municipality “. . . shall be added to the metropolitan sewerage district,” provided that it pay “. . . its fair share of the cost of attachment as determined by mutual agreement or a court of competent jurisdiction.” (Sec. 144.05 (1), Stats.) In the case before us, such qualifying conditions for mandatory attachment to the district were met by the petitioning municipalities.
The sole and single duty assigned to the courts by this statute is to enter an order attaching the petitioning municipality to the metropolitan sewerage district *190(1) if the prescribed procedure has been followed; (2) if the required qualifying conditions are judicially found to have been met; and (3) with a provision that the petitioning municipality “. . . pays its fair share of the cost of attachment as determined by mutual agreement or a court of competent jurisdiction.” (Sec. 144.05 (1), Stats.) The majority opinion agrees that it is constitutionally proper and permissible for a legislative body so to do. As earlier decided by this court, it is permissible to thus direct the court to enter a specific order after determining that certain conditions are met. (Adoption of Morrison (1954), 267 Wis. 625, 66 N. W. 2d 732.)
With the mandate of the statute clear and unequivocal, the writer sees no question of judicial construction presented. Judicial construction of a legislative enactment is invoked only when the law is ambiguous and its meaning subject to different interpretations. (Milwaukee Fire Fighters Asso. v. Milwaukee (1971), 50 Wis. 2d 9, 13, 183 N. W. 2d 18.) We are called upon to construe a statute only when it is capable of being understood by reasonably well-informed persons in either of two or more senses. (National Amusement Co. v. Department of Revenue (1969), 41 Wis. 2d 261, 267, 163 N. W. 2d 625.) The majority does not find the “shall be added” provision of the statute ambiguous. The majority finds need and right to construe, not in the statute as enacted, but as to whether the legislature intended to enact what it did enact. When it provided that petitioning municipalities, meeting specified conditions, “shall be attached,” the legislature, the majority holds, intended only to mean no more than that such qualifying municipalities are “eligible for attachment.” Having changed the statute from a mandatory “shall” to a discretionary “may,” the court majority strikes down the statute, as revised and altered, as an unconstitutional delegation to the courts of a duty legislative or administrative in character. (In *191re City of Fond du Lac (1969), 42 Wis. 2d 323, 333, 166 N. W. 2d 225.)
How can the clear mandate that qualifying municipalities “shall be added” somehow become the nonmanda-tory directive that qualifying municipalities may, but need not be, attached to the sewerage district? The majority accomplishes the substitution of words and change in meaning by a resort to the legislative history of the statute involved. Legislative history can be used to establish legislative intent, but resort to either requires ambiguity in the statute. Legislative history and legislative intent may be determined to resolve ambiguity, but not to create it. Where there is no ambiguity on the face of the statute, there is neither right nor reason to inquire into legislative history and legislative intent. In determining ambiguity, as well as in determining legislative intent, the language of a statute is to be given its ordinary and accepted meaning. (Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage Dist. v. Vocational, Technical & Adult Education (1973), 58 Wis. 2d 628, 207 N. W. 2d 623.) Giving plain and ordinary words their accepted and only meaning, there is nothing ambiguous in the mandate, “shall be added.”
Even if the legislative history of this statute created an alternative construction to what the statute on its face provides, the writer would accept the construction deriving from the language of the statute and reject the construction deriving from the legislative history. Given two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would become unconstitutional and by the other remain valid, the highest court in this land has said that “. . . our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act. . . .” (Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin (1937), 301 U. S. 1, 30, 57 Sup. Ct. 615, 81 L. Ed. 893.) Or, as this court has said, “Our search must be for a means of sustaining the act, not for reasons which might require *192its condemnation.” (State ex rel. Thomson v. Giessel (1958), 265 Wis. 558, 565, 61 N. W. 2d 903.) The duty of this court is “. . . if possible, to so construe the statute as to find it in harmony with accepted constitutional principles. . . .” (State ex rel. Harvey v. Morgan (1966), 30 Wis. 2d 1, 13, 139 N. W. 2d 585.)
However, in the case before us, the legislative history of the enactment does not support the claim that the legislature really did not intend to provide what it clearly did provide. The majority locates a legislative intent in sec. 144.05 (1), Stats. 1969, not “to accomplish more” than was proposed in a senate bill, introduced but not passed in the 1963 legislative session, two years before the law involved was passed in the 1965 legislative session. As introduced in the earlier session, the senate bill had no mandatory provision that qualifying municipalities “shall be added” to metropolitan sewerage districts. However, in the assembly, an amendment was proposed, substantially providing the mandatory feature involved in the case before us. That assembly amendment was defeated. However, in the state senate, on re-referral of the bill, an amendment, identical to the amendment defeated in the assembly, was adopted. The bill, as amended to add the mandatory feature, was not enacted into law, the legislature adjourning without taking final action. It is the language of the “shall be added” amendments, as much as proposals of the original bill, that are part of the legislative history here, particularly because" the second sentence of sec. 144.05 (1), containing the “shall be added” provision graduated from a proposed amendment in the 1963 session to an integral part of the law passed in the 1965 session. The issue of “shall be added” versus “may be added” was debated and discussed by both houses in 1963, and “shall be added” came out the winner by reason of it being made part of the statute as enacted in 1965.
*193The legislative history makes it clear, as might he expected, that lawmakers from the city of Madison opposed and voted against the mandatory attachment of qualifying municipalities in a metropolitan sewerage district. The legislative history makes it as clear, as also might be expected, that lawmakers from Sun Prairie, Stoughton and smaller communities in Dane county supported and voted for the mandatory inclusion of qualifying municipalities in the metropolitan sewerage district. In the legislature the representatives of the smaller communities in the county won the battle. In the courts they have now lost the war, but it is difficult to see how it can be contended that this result is what the legislature intended when it provided by statute that petitioning municipalities, following a prescribed procedure and meeting required qualifications “shall be added” to a metropolitan sewerage district. The writer would reverse, not affirm, the trial court order.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Bruce F. Beilfuss and Mr. Justice Connor T. Hansen join in this dissent.