Court Opinion

ID: 9654024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:02:35.137342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:04.947232
License: Public Domain

SIMS, Judge
(concurring).
Since I am not in full accord with the majority opinion, I deem it appropriate to write a brief concurring one.
Under § 4 of the Act, I do not think the bonds voted are a direct obligation of the Commonwealth or that the full faith and credit of the Commonwealth is pledged for the payment of the bonds and interest. It is *356my conclusion that § 4 of the Act limits the taxes from which the bonds are to be paid to “taxes for the benefit of the State Road Fund in the form of license, excise taxes and fees relating to registration, operation and use of vehicles on public highways and excise taxes, use and license taxes relating to gasoline and other motor fuels used upon the public highways in Kentucky.”
The special session of the General Assembly in 1956 could not bind successive sessions in this State to maintain the rate of the excise and use taxes mentioned in § 4 of the Act at their present levels. Nor could it agree to increase the rates of such taxes so as to guarantee these taxes will produce for the next thirty years the same amounts in revenue they are now producing, or produce sufficient revenues to meet the payment of these bonds. No General Assembly under our Constitution has the authority or right to tie the hands of future General Assemblies. Billeter & Wiley v. State Highway Commission, 203 Ky. 15, 261 S.W. 855. This is a fundamental rule in constitutional law, where the Constitution does not provide otherwise, as was pointed out in State v. Executive Council of State, 207 Iowa 923, 223 N.W. 737. Hence this enormous bond issue must, in my judgment, be satisfied out of the existing taxes set out in § 4 of the Act as successive sessions may fix the rates thereof. However, this fact does not affect the legality of the bonds because the taxes out of which they are to be satisfied now annually produce a State Road Fund of 75 million dollars, and it does not appear this revenue will be reduced in the future — on the contrary it looks like it will be increased.
The question submitting this bond issue to the voters never mentioned that the bonds could be satisfied by a general tax levy. To my mind it is doubtful that the voters ever intended to saddle upon posterity this huge debt which may be satisfied according to the majority opinion by a general tax levy in the event the excise taxes provide insufficient funds to pay the bonds. In accordance with public policy, courts as a general rule, wherever possible, uphold the validity of voted bonds unless clear grounds for invalidating them are shown. 43 Am.Jur., “Public Securities and Obligations”, § 78, p. 335. In my judgment this court has striven with all its might and main to uphold these bonds because they were voted by the tremendous majority of 6 to 1. I am in accord with the majority opinion that the issue is valid, except I believe that the bonds must be satisfied out of the excise taxes set out in § 4 of the Act, and that the 1956 General Assembly cannot freeze such taxes at their present levels or bind future General Assemblies to increase the rates thereof.
It may not be wholly inappropriate to say that had the test been presented before the referendum vote — as was done in the case of Allen v. Cromwell, 203 Ky. 836, 263 S.W. 356 — the majority would probably not be so constrained to attribute so dubious a meaning to or expand the meaning of “an annual tax” beyond what the framers of the Constitution contemplated and what is generally recognized as its meaning; nor would the majority have held one General Assembly could bind successive sessions and bar repeal of or reduction in these license and excise taxes. Perhaps had the people completely recognized the significance and import of the Act, their enthusiasm for voting the debt upon themselves would have been dulled.
I am in accord with the majority of my brethren except as pointed out in this concurring opinion.