Court Opinion

ID: 9825749
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 14:04:02.128859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:20.967506
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, J., concurring. Although I completely agree with Justice Holt’s learned opinion, I should like to add a few lines in an attempt to refute a plausible theory now advanced by the appellee. This theory is bottomed upon our holding in Dozier v. Ragsdale, 186 Ark. 654, 55 S. W. 2d 779, and later cases upholding county salary acts. In the Dozier case the voters of Union County had adopted an initiated salary act. Opponents of the measure contended that it was contrary to a general law of the state, since Act 216 of 1931 had fixed the salaries for the various counties in accordance with existing general and special legislation. We held, however, that Act 216 was not a general law within the meaning of the Initiative and Referendum Amendment. We concluded that the county electorates were free to legislate in local salary matters, even though the General Assembly had by a single statute fixed the salaries for all counties. The appellee now contends that the effect of the Dosier opinion is to vest in cities and counties all legislative power in purely local matters that is otherwise denied to the General Assembly by Amendment 14 to our constitution, which prohibits local or special acts. If this contention is correct, Amendments 7 and 14 together operate to establish in Arkansas a system similar to that generally known as Home Rule. No longer is it necessary for a city or county to base its local legislation only upon authority delegated by the General Assembly; the power exists unless it is denied by general law. A city has, for example, the power to levy an income tax unless a state law prohibits that action. This theory is wholly untenable. The effect of the Initiative and Referendum Amendment is merely to make the electorate a legislature coordinate with existing legislative bodies. In the case of a state-wide initiated act, the power of the people is co-extensive with that of the General Assembly. But in the case of a local electorate, such as the inhabitants of a city, the power to initiate ordinances is merely co-extensive with that of the city council. There must still be a state statute delegating authority in local matters before the city or county electors are permitted to act. This conclusion is inevitable when one realizes that the initiative and referendum are intended to go hand in hand. Neither is ordinarily broader than the other. Yet the power of referendum is needed only if the local legislative body has been delegated the authority to act in the first instance. So of the initiative. It may be noted that a contention exactly like the appellee’s has been made and rejected in Oregon, after whose system of initiative and referendum our own is modeled. Carriker v. Lake County, 89 Ore. 240, 171 P. 407, 173 P. 573. Dozier v. Ragsdale and other salary act cases present a fact situation almost unique. A state law fixing county salaries is general in the sense that it applies to all seventy-five counties, but it is local in the sense that it is tailored to the needs of each particular county. It is really a combination of seventy-five local acts embraced in a single statute. To deny the power of initiated action in such cases would be to deny the power of referendum in essentially local matters, since a single dissatisfied county could not expect the voters as a whole to reject the statute in a state-wide election. Hence this exception to the rule requiring delegated authority for local action — an exception inherent in the very scheme of the Initiative and Referendum- — must be recognized in cases like Dozier v. Ragsdale, in which the state statute is general only because it is fitted to local conditions in every one of the seventy-five counties. But this exception cannot be extended to support the theory that cities and counties now have uncontrolled sovereignty in all matters of local concern. Millwee and Leflar, JJ., join in this opinion.