Court Opinion

ID: 9851561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:15:01.438136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:50.360248
License: Public Domain

Legge, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part.)
Concurring in the conclusions of the majority opinion as to the other constitutional issues presented in this case, I find myself unable to agree that the fifteen per cent overall debt limitation prescribed by Section 5 of Article X is not applicable here.
That section is set out in full in the majority opinion, and need not be reproduced here. Its manifest purpose is to protect property within, “any territory of this State” overlapped by two or more political subdivisions or municipal corporations against excessive taxation, by forbidding their aggregate debt over such territory to exceed at any time fifteen per cent of 'the assessed value of all taxable property therein. Its clear language contains no suggestion that a county, or an incorporated municipality, or a school district, or a bridge district, or any other political subdivision or municipal cor*531poration, whether located within a county or extending into or over more than one county, is to be excluded from its operation. The words “any territory of this State” completely negate any such idea. That no such exclusion was intended is evidence from the opinion by Mr. Justice Pope in Todd v. City of Laurens, 48 S. C. 395, 26 S. E. 682, and from the fact that Section 5 of Article X has been amended some eighty times for the purpose of obtaining exclusion of various political subdivisions and municipal corporations from its operation.
Nor is there to be found in the language of the Section any sound basis for the proposition suggested in Bagnail v. Clarendon & Orangeburg Bridge District, 131 S. C. 109, 126 S. E. 644, and referred to in the majority opinion here, that its prohibition may be avoided by having the tax levy made by the Comptroller General. The fifteen per cent limitation is directed to the amount of the district’s debt (in this case to be created by its Commission through the issuance of general obligation bonds), not to the mechanics of the tax levy.
In the cases cited in the majority opinion (Elliott v. Heyward, 127 S. C. 468, 121 S. E. 257; Banks v. School Dist. No. 18, Greenwood County, 129 S. C. 218, 123 S. E. 834; Bagnall v. Clarendon & Orangeburg Bridge District, 131 S. C. 109, 126 S. E. 644; and Winstead v. Williams, 132 S. C. 365, 128 S. E. 46) the Court has either ignored or attempted to evade the plain language of the constitutional limitation. The majority opinion, tacitly conceding that those decisions are unsound, concludes that despite their unsoundness we should follow them because under them bonds have been issued and are outstanding — to put it otherwise, because it may be economically inexpedient to overrule them. It is difficult to perceive how the rights of holders of such obligations can be impaired by our decision in the instant case. At all events that is a matter with which we are not properly concerned here.
*532If the language of the constitutional mandate were of doubtful import and had been consistently construed to mean a certain thing, I should feel bound to adhere to that construction despite my doubt of its correctness. But that is not the situation here. The decisions referred to above, since Todd v. City of Laurens, have in reality amounted not to a uniform interpretation of the fifteen per cent limitation, but to its progressive amendment. They cannot be justified on judicial grounds. They should be repudiated, and effect should be given at last to the plain, unambiguous language of the constitutional limitation. Our duty is to preserve the Constitution, not to perpetuate so manifest a judicial error in its interpretation.