Court Opinion

ID: 9811658
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:26:57.8602+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:59.426974
License: Public Domain

Stacy, C. J.,
dissenting: Desirable as it may be to award the plaintiffs judgment for their salaries — and such is quite desirable — I think the Court has departed from the law in order to do so on the present record. For this reason, I am compelled to dissent. No authority is cited, and none has been found, for overriding statutory provisions on an unsupported argument of ab incorwenimti. In this respect, the case is probably sui generis.
It is specified in 3 C. S., 5596, that the May budget, to be prepared by the county board of education, “shall provide for three separate school funds: (a) a salary fund; (b) an operating and equipment fund; and (c) a fund for the repayment of all notes, loans and bonds,” with further provision as to what each fund shall contain.
Acting under authority of this section and in obedience to its command, the board of education' of New Hanover County in the year 1926 duly submitted the following May budget for the school year 1926-1927:
*221Detailed Appeoved Budget, 1926-1927.
Teachers’ salaries .$307,468.50
Supt. and Asst. Supt., salary. 9,375.00
Board of Education, per diem. ' 408.00
Superintendent Public Welfare. 1,200.00
Office expense, clerical and supplies. 5,400.00
Salary and bond, Treasurer. 1,430.00
Fuel,, water and electric current. 10,500.00
Janitors . 15,000.00
Supplies . 5,500.00
Insurance . 3,184.00
Rents . 1,200.00
Interest on short loans. 7,500.00
Trucks and transportation. 16,415.00
Repairs . 8,500.00
Clerks . 4,620.00
Jeans Sup. 390.00
County Demonstration Agent. 400.00
Furniture and fixtures. 1,000.00
Principal, State loans. 11,850.00
Interest on State loans. 11,259.50
Expense, Superintendent . 750.00
Total.$423,350.00
This budget was approved by the commissioners, with admonition to the board of education that they would not be responsible for- any expense in excess of the budget, the total amount of which has since been paid to the board of education.
3 C. S., 5605, provides: “And the county commissioners, after 3 March, 1923, shall not be liable for any debt other than loans from the State, incurred by the county board of education in excess of the amount set forth in the May budget, unless the making of the debt was approved by the county commissioners.”
It is admitted that the contracts for teachers’ salaries for the school year 1926-1927 were in excess of $307,468.50, the amount set forth in the budget for that purpose. But the court holds that by reason of the “budgeting forward” arrangement adopted in 1923, three years prior thereto, the action of the commissioners in approving the May, 1926, budget amounted in effect to amending the budget by adding a sum sufficient to cover teachers’ salaries/ for the months of July, August and September, 1927, though not shown therein, and approving it as thus amended, notwithstanding the intervening admonitory resolution adopted *222by the commissioners in 1924, and repeated in substance in 1926. I do not think the record supports this conclusion.
It may be safely asserted that if the action of the commissioners bad the effect of amending the budget and approving it for a much larger sum than that shown therein for teachers’ salaries (not then known perhaps), neither the board of commissioners nor the board of education so understood it; for the record clearly discloses a studied effort on the part of the commissioners to confine the board of education, in its expenditures, to the amounts set out in the budgets.
Furthermore, if the contracts made for teachers’ salaries were within the “amount set forth in the May budget,” though in excess of the amount designated, for that purpose, “because the May budget set forth the (total) amount of $423,350.00,” as stated in the Court’s opinion, does it not follow as a necessary corollary, if the same rule is to apply equally to other matters, that the limit to be expended for each item in the budget is the total amount of the sums designated for all the items enumerated therein? If so, the ultimate liability of the county, under such a budget, would be the sum total of all the amounts multiplied by the number of items in the budget. That is to say, the ultimate liability of New Hanover County, under the budget above set out, would be $423,350 for each item designated therein, or a total of $8,890,350 (plus whatever sum should be added under the doctrine of “amendment by budgeting forward”). This may be the law, but I cannot think so; nor is it to be assumed that the logic of the Court’s opinion will be pursued beyond the exigencies of the present case.
The amount “set forth” in the budget with respect to any given item, as I understand it, means the amount designated therein for that particular purpose; otherwise, why should the May budget provide for three separate school funds ? The amount set forth for teachers’ salaries in the May budget, now under consideration, is $307,468.50, and not $423,350.00.
The plaintiffs may be entitled to recover, even as against the board of commissioners of New Hanover County, for which reason I think the case should be remanded for further findings. But, in< my opinion, this right has not been made to appear on the present record. However, my views of the case have not prevailed, and as they are quite different from those expressed in the opinion of the Court, it would serve no useful purpose to write them out in a dissent. Gui bono?
I am glad the plaintiffs are to recover their salaries, as they ought to recover them, but I cannot approve the method adopted nor agree with the Court in its interpretation of the law. The same result might easily be accomplished on a fuller finding of facts, without dissent on the part of any one, but as a majority of the Court is satisfied with the present record, my concurrence is not needed.