Court Opinion

ID: 9570593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:24:30.514896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:03.460857
License: Public Domain

Gunderson, J.,
and Springer, J.,
concurring in the result:
We are reluctant to endorse precatory dicta as to how the concerned governmental officials should perform their administrative responsibilities, or as to the frame of mind with which those responsibilities should be pursued. Accordingly, with all respect to our colleagues, we state our views separately. We do, however, fully agree with our brethren that the district court ruled correctly in this case and should be affirmed.
As noted above by our brethren, from the language of the statute, by earmarking assessment fee revenues primarily for the use of the judiciary, the legislature clearly did not intend to create simply a general revenue measure to assist in the funding of government. Nor did the legislature intend to release the various municipalities from the obligation to fund their courts adequately, in good faith, out of general revenue funds.
What the legislature quite evidently intended, rather, was to provide the courts with a source of supplemental funding, derived directly from persons using the courts, to be employed at the discretion of the judiciary in improving their courts and increasing their courts’ efficiency. To achieve these ends, we think innovation and reasonable experimentation were contemplated, and only if a municipality can show that a proposed use of assessment-fee funds is palpably unreasonable is the municipality’s reversionary interest to be deemed invaded.
In this case, the trial judge clearly decided that no such invasion had been established, and we cannot fault this determination.