Court Opinion

ID: 9824795
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 11:27:13.007357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:40:07.599505
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
If the opinion heretofore written may be understood in the sense in which it was intended, there need be no apprehension about the constitutional validity of certain acts of the Legislature at the session of 1919 affecting the salaries of public officers in Montgomery county. 'Obviously a majority of these acts are wholly untouched by section 96 of the Constitution. In two of them, viz. the act fixing the salary of the -tax assessor (Acts 1919, p. 108) and the act fixing the salary of the tax collector (Acts 1919, p. 263). it was provided that the officers in question should receive “allowances” for clerical help; but the provision in both is that the clerical help shall be regularly employed and shall be paid in monthly installments. It is entirely clear that these so-called allowances do not go to the officers named, and that the compensation of clerical help is not an allowance to public officers, but the “allowances” for clerical help in the cases mentioned, under the decisions of this court, are, notwithstanding the language employed, not allowances even to the clerical help employed, but salaries, with which section 96 of the Constitution has no sort of concern. Dane v. Smith, 54 Ala. 47; Brandon v. Askew, 172 Ala. 168, 54 So. 605. But those acts relating to Montgomery county are not involved in this case; they are cited, we assume, with the purpose to illustrate the legislative understanding of “general law,” but in fact they mean nothing in this case which turns upon three constitutional' propositions: (1) The definition of general and local law; (2) the *460prescription of uniformity embodied in section 96; and (3) the requirement as to publication in the case of local laws as set forth in section 106.
By a later addition to appellee’s brief, acts to be found on pages 15, 19, 21, 86, 151, 220, 248, 268, 269, 342, and 552, of the Acts of 1923, are called to our attention as further illustrating the legislative construction of the Constitution. These acts all relate to salaries of public officers in Jefferson county. Salaries of public officers in Jefferson county are also mentioned in the constitutional amendment1 of 1912. But salaries of public officers are not affected by section 96 of the Constitution. It- appears to have been suggested in Brandon v. Askew, supra, that a salary should be considered an allowance within the meaning of section 96; but the court said:
“We have no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that solicitors are not compensated by allowances, but by salaries only, and that the constitutional provisions here relied upon by the appellee [as reason for holding void the act providing, inter alia, that the solicitor of the fifteenth circuit should receive a salary of $1,800 per annum] have no bearing upon his case.”
These numerous legislative acts, referred to, have in truth nothing to do with this case; but, to allay apprehension, we have given them notice as above.
Application overruled.