Court Opinion

ID: 9716279
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:33:05.860834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:43.371657
License: Public Domain

Cootoed, P. J. A. D.,
Temporarily Assigned (dissenting). I would adhere to the decisions of this court in Wagner v. Newark, 24 N. J. 467, 479 (1957), and Grofo Realty Co. v. Bayonne, 24 N. J. 482, 486 (1957), that municipalities do not have power to enact rent control ordinances without express authority from the State and that the general police power provisions of the Home Rule Act, N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2, upon which each of the instant municipalities relies for the power, do not convey it.
I agree with so much of the majority opinion as holds rent control constitutionally delegable by the Legislature to municipalities. I do not agree that N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2, properly construed in relation to the specific subject matter here of concern, has in fact delegated it.
I understand the majority rationale to be that any power which is constitutionally delegable to a municipality, no matter the extent to which, along with its local impact, it affects *539the applicability of general private law and rights thereunder and involves interests in which the State at large has a vital concern, is automatically to be deemed in fact delegated by N. J. S. A. 40:48 — S so long as state preemption of the subject matter cannot be found. I would think such a principle unsound.
It will be helpful if I capsule the substance of my contrasting view of N. J. S. A. 40:48-2 before explaining how I arrive at it. The section reads:
Any municipality may make, amend, repeal and enforce such other ordinances, regulations, rules and by-laws not contrary to the laws of this state or of the United States, as it may deem necessary and proper for the good government, order and protection of persons and property, and for the preservation of the public health, safety and welfare of the municipality and its inhabitants, and as may be necessary to carry into effect the powers and duties conferred and imposed by this subtitle, or by any law.
By its language and sense the granted power is confined to subject matter concerning the particular “municipality and its inhabitants.” It therefore obviously does not extend to subject matter affecting general law or private rights of citizens at large or involving state policy and concern as distinguished from local. The act is simply a catch-all to pick up and delegate appropriate aspects of local police power which the Legislature may have overlooked in the course of its manifold delegations to municipalities of specified regulatory powers.
However, one finds that a broad diversity of potential subject matter falls into both categories stated — matters of local concern and those of state concern. The subject here at hand, rent control, is illustrative. Thus, deciding which aspect of concern shall be determinative as to the coverage of the general language of the Home Rule Act in a specific instance requires a weighing by the court of the respective local and state concerns from every standpoint which would rationally point to the putative legislative intent. I conceive that this Court engaged in that exercise in Wagner, *540found that the state concerns greatly predominated, and therefore held the unrestrained power of rent control was not intended by the Legislature to pass to the municipalities automatically by enactment of N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2. For reasons which follow, I agree with that judgment.
The constructional issue is complicated by some ambiguity in the previous decisions of the Court concerning the distinction between the criteria of constitutional delegability of powers to a municipality and the criteria as to what particular powers were in fact delegated by the general police power provisions of the Home Rule Act. N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2. Unfortunately, the opinion in Wagner, supra, blurs the distinction. It contains language suggestive of the concepts both that rent control is not delegable, and, on the other hand, that it is delegable but not in fact delegated under the statute because of the great predominance of its state-wide aspects over its local aspects. I believe the case finally shakes down to the latter as the controlling rationale.1
In the area of inherent non-delegability Wagner cites, on the authority of dicta in Paul v. Gloucester County, 50 N. J. L. 585, 601-602 (E. & A. 1888), such subjects as the law of ejectment, attachment and descent. (24 N. J. at 478). Wagner adds the master and servant and landlord and tenant relationships, administration of estates, etc. {Id. at 478). There then follows the enigmatic statement:
* * * The broad grant of power under R. 8. 40 :48-2, supra, and N. J. 8. A. 40 :69A-29 and 30, supra, relates to matters of local concern which may be determined to be necessary and proper for the good and welfare of local inhabitants, and not to those matters involving state policy or in the realm of affairs of general public interest and applicability.
*541It seems to me that this expression, which has recently-been quoted with approval in other cases involving the scope of N. J. 8. A. 40 :48-2, Summer v. Teaneck, 53 N. J. 548, 552-553 (1969); N. J. Builders Ass’n v. Mayor E. Brunswick Tp., 60 N. J. 222, 227 (1972), is too vague for usefulness as a benchmark of constitutional delegability as contrasted with its high utility as a broad guide for judicial determination as to whether the Home Rule Act has actually delegated a particular power or subject matter. There is almost a limitless variety of types of power and subject matter which have been exercised or controlled by municipalities relating both “to matters of local concern” and, albeit indirectly, to matters “involving state policy” or “affairs of general public interest.” Since delegability is typically referred to in the decisions solely in terms of matters not involving private law of general applicability, the foregoing considerations strongly suggest that in practically all cases of mixed local and state concern constitutional delegability exists. Rent control is an example par excellence. But the opinion in Wagner, as quoted above, in setting up criteria in terms of local as opposed to state concern which are not mutually exclusive, is illusory if attempted to be used for testing delegability per se. If, however, the Wagner formulation is used solely as a broad guide for judicial inquiry into whether the Legislature intended the general language of N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2 to vest municipal authority to legislate on a particular subject, it does serve a useful purpose. It informs the judgment of the court as to the broad categories of relevant data which after examination and appraisal can lead to a rational determination as to whether it is sensible to impute to the Legislature an intent that by the generality of the language of section 40:48-2 the particular area of public policy should be vested in unchanneled municipal discretion.
Some of the language in Summer v. Teaneck, supra, is suggestive of the approach I would take. After quoting N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2, and citing the Constitution, Art. IV, § VII, *542par. 11, and Fred v. Mayor and Council of Borough of Old Tappan, 10 N. J. 515, 519-521 (1952), as authority for a conclusion of plenary grant of broad police power to municipalities, the court says (53 N. J. at 552): “Nonetheless there is an implied limitation upon this pervasive grant,” quoting the language I have already excerpted from Wagner, supra, by way of a qualification of what the “grant” “relates to,” i. e., “matters of local concern” etc. and not to those “involving state policy”, etc. (Emphasis added.)
See also In re Public Service Electric and Gas Co., 35 N. J. 358, 371 (1961), wherein, although the case really went off on the point of state, preemption (local attempt to regulate manner of transmission of electric power through the municipality), the court said, citing Wagner, that “even where the State Legislature has not spoken, some matters, inherently in need of uniform treatment, are not a proper subject for municipal legislation.”- Again, while the opinion did not expressly distinguish between constitutional delegability and delegation in fact, its tenor suggests to me a judicial assessment that while the subject matter did literally come within N. J. S. A. 40:48-2, having obvious and serious local implications from a health and hazard standpoint, the preponderating influence of its state-effect aspects weighed sufficiently to warrant the conclusion that the Legislature did not intend by the general grant its regulation by municipalities.
It may be observed that the statutory constructional problem is somewhat cognate to that of state preemption by indirection. Evidence of legislative intent, for general purposes, can be found in fairly amorphous factual background material as well as in express statutory statement. See Oxford Consumer Dis. Co. of No. Phila. v. Stefanelli, 102 N. J. Super. 549, 564-565 (App. Div. 1968), mod. other grounds, 104 N. J. Super. 512 (App. Div. 1969), mod. other grounds, 55 N. J. 489 (1970), app. dism. 400 U. S. 808, 923, 91 S. Ct. 45, 27 L. Ed. 2d 38 (1970). Thus, in State v. Ulesky, 54 N. J. 26 (1969), where the court found that various state *543policies argued against municipal power to adopt a criminal registration ordinance, even though such authority would be assumed to fall within the apparent breadth of N. J. S. A. 40:48-2, and no state statute duplicated the precise area of the municipal action (although some bore on the general problem), the court said (at 31) :
It seems to us, therefore, that the subject is such that, while it does not foreclose the delegation of the State’s police power to municipalities, it nonetheless advises against that course except under statutory guidance and restraint.
While the result of bar in Uleshy was categorized under the label of state preemption, it has frequently been noted that there is no magic in labels. The doctrine of preemption is simply one of degree of manifestation by other legislation and indicia of legislative intent, easily demonstrable or reasonably inferable, that the Legislature does not desire a given consequence of the uncanalized delegation otherwise prima facie indicated by the broad contours of N. J. S. A. 40:48-2 — but wants the subject matter dealt with only at the state level. It is only a doorstep away from the cognate principle that, by a similar resort to all available indicia of legislative intent, it can rationally be determined that given subject matter is not intended by the general grant of N. J. 3. A. 40 :48-2 for unrestricted municipal regulatory discretion; as where such indicia point to an intent for withholding of the power unless the Legislature grants it expressly, whether with or without state-mandated controls or standards. The common principle applicable in both areas is that the court will not permit itself to be locked in by absolute presumptions of legislative intent in a search for the meaning of N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2.
I thus proceed to weigh the factors of state vis-a-vis local concern -relevant to a determination of the legislative intent as to whether N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2 delegates totally unrestricted regulatory jurisdiction on rent control to municipalities.
*5441. The jurisdiction affects freedom to contract with respect to a very common and important commodity in general commerce — apartment units of every description and price range, with ownerships varying in character from investment syndicates to modest decedents5 estates in trust for dependents. The power involves interference with the owner’s statutory right to terminate a tenancy at the end of a lease period (though not exercised by the subject municipalities), normally enforcible by an array of statutes. See Wagner, supra, 24 N. J., at 479.
2. The public need for and constitutionality of rent control regulation depends upon the existence of a shortage of housing accommodations of emergency dimensions. This is typically a concomitant of general cyclical inflationary trends of regional if not national proportions. While the extent of the housing shortage may to some minor degree vary locally, the subject is predominantly of statewide rather than peculiarly local incidence and concern. There is therefore corresponding need that, if there is to be rent control at all, uniform statewide regulations be enacted in respect of such basic incidents as assurance of fair return on investment, provision for restrictions on eviction or termination of tenancy and as to adequacy of maintenance of services, fair procedures for administrative review of applications for relief by either landlords or tenants, and fair and sufficiently comprehensive administrative rules and regulations in all other pertinent respects to implement the legislative provisions adopted. All of these desiderata peculiarly require the manpower, expertise and funding typically available at state rather than local levels, permissibly supplemented locally with the resources of such municipalities as may opt (if local option is legislated) for coming into a program under legislatively fixed minimum standards.
The foregoing has been the established, and, so far as one can tell, the generally effective manner by which this State has administered rent control in the past, subject to overriding or complementary federal controls, generally *545equally comprehensive, when those have existed. A comparison of the well-thought out and comprehensive provisions of such rent control statutes as L. 1953, c. 216 and L. 1950, c. 234 with the rudimentary ordinances now before us well illustrates the point. As examples of a number of patent apparent deficiencies of the latter,2 one finds that none of them undertake to assure an owner a right of fair operating return on his investment; compare L. 1953, c. 216, § 16(b); one of them contains no time limitation; another by reason of inept draftsmanship fails to effectuate an apparent intent to prohibit terminations of tenancy at the end of lease terms at the will of the lessor. There are numerous ambiguities. While the inexpertness or drafting and substantive deficiencies of particular rent control ordinances adopted without statewide controls or standards does not, of course, establish per se that the Legislature did not intend to delegate such unrestricted power by N. J. S. A. 40:48-2, they do constitute some evidence as to what may be expected, in practice, under such a view of the statute, and thus may be looked to, along with all the other available indications of intent, as some manifestation of the legislative desires in the matter.
3. The nature of past legislative activity in the field is evidential. When a strong need has been manifested, the Legislature has acted. Its chosen mode of recognition of appropriate local participation has been by permitting local option to come into ox stay out of a state-regulated scheme, as in L. 1953, c. 216, § 28; or by special legislation available for the use of opting municipalities, as in L. 1956, c. 146. The Legislature has also noticed the subject of municipal rent control in more recent years, expressly delegating such power in relation to substandard multiple dwellings. L. 1966, c. 168, § 4. Even in that limited context it took care to establish standards and to assure fair net operating *546income to owners, § 4(e), among other safeguards. At the moment of this writing the Legislature is in earnest debate over a comprehensive rent control bill which has passed the Assembly, evidencing ongoing concern with the subject at the state level.
4. Chaotic conditions can be foreseen in relation to the interests of both owners and tenants if only a municipal boundary line can separate apartment houses subject to no rent controls whatever from those where any of an infinite variety of kinds of control may exist, none conformable to any state regulation. This is the fair prospect, under the determination of the majority, in solidly urban areas in the populous counties where a number of municipalities frequently are found to coexist within a few square miles, many with concentrations of apartment houses of every size, description and rental category, and usually forming an integral market area for such facilities, in which owners and potential occupants vie competitively.
All of the foregoing considerations may properly be deemed influential upon the collective legislative mind. Reflection over them firmly convinces me, notwithstanding such factors as may argue for the desirability of unrestricted local discretion, that in enacting N. J. 8. A. 40:48-2 the Legislature never intended, and does not now, that the totally unrestricted power of rent control regulation should exist in the municipalities of the State at large without express, suplementary legislative authorization.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Weintraub, Justices Jacobs, Proctor, Hall, Mountain and Sullivan- — 6.
For reversal — Judge Coneoed — 1.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice Weintraub, Justices Jacobs, Proctor, Hall, Mountain and Sullivan —6.
For affirmance — Judge Coneoed — 1.

 “Moreover, legislative history since the inception of federal controls after the beginning of World War II shows a clear recognition that rent control was not a matter within the realm of municipal power without express authority from the State.” (Emphasis added.) (24 N. J. at 479)

The points not having been argued, I do not purport here to be passing upon the validity of any of these ordinances.