Court Opinion

ID: 9728459
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:08:36.188574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:48.818258
License: Public Domain

Danhof, C.J.
(concurring). I concur in the opinion of my colleagues. I write separately to describe what I perceive to be the differences between the case at bar and The Raven, Inc v City of Southfueld, 69 Mich App 696; 245 NW2d 370 (1976), rev’d 399 Mich 853 (1977), upon which the plaintiffs have heavily relied.
The Raven presented the question of whether the mayor of a home rule city, being invested with a veto power pursuant to the city charter, could *656exercise that veto as to the city council’s approval of an application for a liquor license under the provisions of MCL 436.17; MSA 18.988, which provides merely that such application was to be "approved by the local legislative body”. The Supreme Court approved the reasoning of the dissenter in this Court, who maintained that the "plain meaning” of the statute committed the contested approval power to the local legislative body alone. 69 Mich App 696, 704.
In The Raven, the mayoral veto power was the product of the municipality’s charter; the Home Rule Cities Act, in providing for the office of mayor, does not explicitly propose that the mayor exercise a veto power. See MCL 117.3; MSA 5.2073. In the case at bar the contested veto power, although surely granted, by the local electorate as in The Raven, is also the subject of the Legislature’s explicit consideration. See MCL 45.561; MSA 5.302(61). Thus, that power cannot be as easily discounted as was the veto power at issue in The Raven.
It is not as clear in this case, as it was in The Raven, that the statute providing for the county’s withdrawal from SEMTA, MCL 124.405(1); MSA 5.3475(105X1), and the provisions authorizing merger of the offices of the Commissioner of Public Works and the Drain Commissioner, MCL 280.21(3); MSA 11.1021(3), were intended by the Legislature to be a simple grant of exclusive authority. Unlike the Liquor Control Act at issue in The Raven, these statutes require a two-thirds majority vote to perform the actions they authorize. Both actions are of an unusual nature. The extraordinary majority required for these actions reflects a policy limiting the county commission’s power to act, rather than expanding it. Such a *657policy says nothing of the Legislature’s intent with respect to the executive veto provided for in the statute under which the Oakland County government is organized.
It may be further observed that, under the provisions of MCL 45.561; MSA 5.302(61), the same two-thirds majority required to withdraw from SEMTA or reorganize the office of the Commissioner of Public Works may override the veto of the executive. Thus, the addition of the executive veto to these actions is a virtual nullity, and the commission’s powers in these matter are, as a practical matter, untouched by the veto. To bar the executive’s veto power in this case would disturb the "Option B” governmental scheme proposed by the Legislature with no corresponding preservation of any other legislatively-established values or governmental schemes.