Court Opinion

ID: 9568305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:02:26.544911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:24:35.166687
License: Public Domain

Lewis, Justice
(concurring) :
I concur in the result of the opinion of Justice Little-john, but reach it on different grounds.
New Article VIII, Section 7, requires that the General Assembly shall provide by general law for the structure, organization, powers, duties, functions, and the responsibilities of counties, including the power to tax different areas at different rates of taxation related to the nature and level of governmental services provided. This provision is, by the clear import of its language, immediately operative and imposes a present duty upon the General Assembly, so as to make applicable the general law which it directs shall be enacted.
Recreational facilities, a public purpose, could be provided for by Dorchester County in the Lower Dorchester area under the general law authorized and required in Article VIII, Section 7. The language of the mandate in Section 7 is certainly sufficiently broad to include the authority to empower counties to accomplish local improvements and provide governmental services, including recreational facilities, benefiting only parts of their area through the means of taxing the persons and property in such parts at different rates *576related to the nature and level of such local improvements and services.
One effect of Article VIII, Section 7, and with which we are here only concerned, is simply to enlarge the functions of counties, so as to make it possible for them to provide those public services which have heretofore been provided by the General Assembly through the expedient of special purpose districts, thereby avoiding the vice of the countywide levy for local benefit. As stated in respondent’s brief, the purpose is clear that the county, with “the power to tax different areas at different rates of taxation related to the nature and level of governmental services provided,” is intended to be the governmental authority to provide and administer such services in local areas after the effective date of new Article VIII, Section 7, and that the special purpose district, with a different board or commission in each instance. is no longer to be the cumbersome vehicle by which they can be provided.
Therefore, the special acts creating the Lower Dorchester Recreation District and authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds contravene Article III, Section 34, Subdivision IX, which prohibits the enactment of a special law “where a general law can be made applicable.”
Moss, C. J., concurs.