Court Opinion

ID: 9797572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:24:20.868871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:57:16.244838
License: Public Domain

CARPENETI, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent from today’s opinion because I believe it miseharacterizes the nature of the asset at issue in this case and therefore misapplies our case law on appropriative initiatives, especially our decision in Pullen v. Ulmer.1 Taxicab permits allow commercial operators to use a costly and important public resource' — the public roads — for private gain. As such, they give direct access to a valuable and limited public resource to those who receive them. This situation is legally indistinguishable from the permits at issue in Pullen. Our decision in that case should control the outcome here.
In Pullen we invalidated an initiative that would have directed the state to favor noncommercial over commercial users of salmon in issuing fishing permits. We acknowledged that “the state does not own wildlife in precisely the same way that it owns ordinary property” but we characterized the true question as being “whether the state’s interest in wildlife is such that it can appropriately be characterized as state property subject to appropriation.”2 We found that it was, noting that a precipitous decline in wildlife would affect the state in a “significant” manner.3 Just as the people of Alaska have an interest in fairly allocating the limited wildlife resources of our state, so do the people of Anchorage have an interest in fairly alloeat-*427mg the use of limited and publicly funded roadways for commercial purposes.
Today’s opinion distinguishes Pullen on the basis that “[u]nlike a license to fish, or a permit to extract mineral resources, a taxicab permit does not authorize the holder to take a public resource. The underlying things of value — the fares to be paid by taxicab riders — do not belong to the municipality.” But the thing of value here is not the right to collect fares — it is the right to use the public roads, a costly and important public resource, for commercial purposes, here including the solicitation of business.4 A taxicab permit holder has been given a specific franchise which is no less an asset than is a license to catch fish.5
Today’s opinion also argues that the initiative cannot constitute an appropriation because “taxicab permits are not issued to raise money for the municipality, but to serve a regulatory function.” This conclusion creates a false dichotomy. Both purposes are present, as evidenced by the Anchorage Municipal Code’s treatment of taxicab permits. The code requires the municipality to consider “public convenience and necessity” in the granting of permits,6 and it requires that new permits be sold at “public auction”7 to the “highest qualified bidder.”8 Consideration of the public convenience and necessity serves the regulatory function, while the requirements that the permits be sold at public auction to the highest bidder serve the revenue-raising function. Moreover, $45,000 per permit is a significant amount of money and the total amount raised through sales of permits — approximately $160,0009 — cannot accurately be characterized, as today’s opinion does, as “not significant.” We have previously characterized lesser amounts as “significant” 10 and “substantial.11” That the municipality has issued only a limited number since 1994 does not suggest, as today’s opinion “assume[s],” that revenue-raising is not a purpose of the code; rather, it suggests that the municipality has carefully balanced two non-exclusive purposes, regulation and revenue-raising.
Finally, today’s opinion authorizes a “give-away program” no less than the initiatives found unconstitutional in Pullen and Alaska Action Center.12, Rather than limiting the number of licenses as required by the public convenience and necessity, the initiative requires that a license be issued “to any qualified applicant.”13 And, rather than requiring that the license go to “the highest qualified bidder”14 at “public auction,” 15 the proposed initiative would require that the license fee be limited to administrative costs,16 approximately $825, rather than the market value of approximately $45,000.
*428As we held in Staudenmaier v. Municipality of Anchorage,17 a forced sale of a municipal asset — even at market value — is an appropriation of that asset. Here, the forced sale — for $825 — of an asset for which the municipality could garner as much as $45,000 at auction is equivalent to a give-away of the asset. Because the initiative would “designate how the Anchorage Assembly is to make use of municipal assets,”18 it would effect an appropriation. For these reasons I would affirm the judgment of the superior court.

. 923 P.2d 54 (Alaska 1996).

. Id. at 59.

. Id.

. Cf. In re Hathorn’s Transp. Co., 121 Vt. 349, 158 A.2d 464, 467 (1960) (motor carrier certificate “is a franchise, and is a property right").

. In Pullen we noted that the state does not own fish but has "property-like interests” in them. 923 P.2d at 60-61. The municipality does own the public roads, and thus the case for allowing appropriation of part of this property via initiative is even weaker than it was in Pullen.

. AMC 11.20.030(C).

. AMC 11.20.030(D).

. AMC 11.20.030(D)(1).

. This figure represents only the value of assets that in the future may be lost to the public under the initiative. This dissent does not touch on the far greater loss of value that may befall the private sector; that is, current permit holders. According to an affidavit filed by James B. Taylor, an officer of the Anchorage Taxicab Permit Owners’ Association, there are 160 transferable general taxicab permits in Anchorage, each with a market value of $125,000 per permit.

. Murphy v. City of Wrangell, 763 P.2d 229, 233 (Alaska 1988) (possible judgment against city for $25,000 or greater represented a "significant amount of money”).

. See Fairbanks Fire Fighters Ass’n v. City of Fairbanks, 934 P.2d 759, 763 n. 11 (Alaska 1997) ($4000 per week was "a substantial amount of money”).

. Alaska Action Ctr., Inc. v. Municipality of Anchorage, 84 P.3d 989, 993-94 (Alaska 2004).

. Initiative, § 17.14.

. AMC 11.20.030(D)(1).

. AMC 11.20.030(D).

. Initiative, § 17.14.

. 139 P.3d 1259, 1262 (Alaska 2006). See also Alaska Conservative Political Action Comm. v. Municipality of Anchorage, 745 P.2d 936 (Alaska 1987) (forced sale of municipal asset at below-market value constitutes appropriation).

. Staudenmaier, 139 P.3d at 1263 n. 23.