Court Opinion

ID: 9713218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:11:06.488998+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:17.640147
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring in part). I concur with Mr. Justice Kelly save only as to his treatment of what we refer to as question No. 4. That question is: “Does article 8, § 10, of the Michigan Constitution (1908), which limits raising of money by taxation or borrowing, ‘for the construction or repair of public buildings or bridges,’ to 1/10 of a mill, also limit the amount that can be spent or accumulated from sources other than direct taxation?”
*327In 1945 the prosecuting attorney of Washtenaw county inquired of then attorney general and now Chief Justice Dethmers whether the Washtenaw board of supervisors “could set up a building fund for a courthouse in advance by means of allocating fees paid to various county officers to a so-called building fund.” The attorney general answered in the negative (OAGr, 1945-1946, 305; supplemental opinion OAGr, 1945-1946, 326).
The chancellor below, relying, in part, on the mentioned opinion and, in part, on his own painstaking research, held (a) that the legislature “has been persistently pressed to widen the authorizations to the point that it might be plausibly claimed that surpluses and operational receipts were to be considered ‘miscellaneous revenues’ and available for transfers to sinking or building funds, in addition to the permitted l/10th mill;” (b) that the legislature has “consistently refused to yield to that pressure,” and (c) that any contrary interpretation of the statutes in question (see Mr. Justice Kelly’s opinion for citation and quotation) would result in offense to article 8, § 10, Const 1908.
I agree with the chancellor and adopt his summational reasoning as follows:
“Cutting, as we are in duty bound to do, through all masks and veneers, and relying on what is implicit in the constitutional limitation itself, I am persuaded that these accumulations around which the case turns, whether called surpluses, other available funds, or something else, have, in fact and in substance, been raised by taxation — they consist of moneys which it would not have been necessary to levy, assess and collect from taxpayers if the surpluses had been carried over into succeeding years, and if the budget estimates and tax levies had been limited to the amount reasonably required over and *328above money on hand, and over and above acceptably accurate estimates of prospective income.*
“It is a fundamental rule of statutory construction that legislative enactments are not to be held unconstitutional unless their terms cannot be reasonably interpreted in any other way except to bring them into conflict with some provision of the Constitution; or, to put it another way, they must be construed, if reasonably possible, in such a way as to avoid such conflict. Measured by this test, it is my conclusion that the statutes in question can be reasonably interpreted as not including within their terms authorization to transfer to building funds such items as the surpluses and operational revenues here involved; and that, so interpreted, they are not unconstitutional.”
I would affirm the decree below in its entirety, without costs to any party.
Smith and Voelker, JJ., concurred with Black, J.
Kavanagh, J., did not sit.

 The emphasis is that of the chancellor.