Court Opinion

ID: 9808177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:29:41.201988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:43.929734
License: Public Domain

CiARK, C. J.,
dissenting: Custom cannot avail against an act of tbe Legislature repealing it. Tbe arm of tbe lawmaking body of tbe State is not so shortened that it cannot repeal a custom as well as a former statute.
*384Chapter 46, Public Local Laws 1915, changed the compensation of all the county officers of Orange to the salary basis. It is entitled “An act to fix salaries for public officers in Orange County.” It provides (section 1) that the sheriff of that county may appoint a deputy in each township who shall receive the fees for serving summons and other process and commissions on executions except the deputy for Hillsboro Township, who shall receive a salary of $600 per annum. Section 2 provides: "All other fees, commissions, pro-fits, and emoluments of all hinds now belonging to or appertaining to, or hereafter by any law belonging or appertaining to the sheriff by virtue of his office shall be faithfully collected by him and turned over to treasurer of said county, to be disposed of as hereinafter provided.” This is explicit and cannot admit of two constructions. Section 14 provides that “This act shall be in full force and effect on and after the first Monday in December, 1916, as to all offices except clerk, and as to him the first Monday in December, 1918.”
Section 3 provides that the jailer shall be paid a salary, to be fixed by the county commissioners. Section 4 provides that “Said sheriff shall receive a salary of $1,600 per annum in lieu of all other compensation whatever ” and provides, further, that his deputy for Hillsboro Township shall be paid $600 per annum and that the .county shall pay the premium on the sheriff’s bond. All the above to be paid by the county “out of the funds herein created.”
The statute then provides for the amount of the salary of the Superior Court clerk, the register of deeds, and treasurer; and section 9 provides, under a penalty, that all the officers “hereinbefore mentioned shall faithfully perform all the duties of their several offices imposed upon them by law, and shall receive no compensation nor allowance whatever for any extra or additional service rendered to the county or State or other Government agencies under existing law or laws hereafter enacted, except as hereinbefore provided.”
Section 10 provides: “The officers hereinbefore named are each required to keep a fee book upon which shall be entered, immediately upon their receipt, all fees or commissions, and are required to turn over to the treasurer of Orange County all moneys coming into their hands from such source”; that the treasurer shall audit the books and shall post at the courthouse door an itemized statement of all the fees and commissions, and that the county commissioners shall supervise the whole matter. And section 11 provides that any officer failing to collect or turn over any fees and commissions shall be guilty of misdemeanor. This would apply to the defendant if he received any commissions after the date the act was to be “in full force and effect.”
*385Section 12 provides. “All moneys coming into the bands of the treasUrer of Orange County by virtue of tbis act shall be held by him as a separate and distinct fund, and after paying the monthly salaries and allowances provided for in this act and after paying premiums of sheriff and treasurer, the balance of said fund shall semiannually be. divided equally between the public school fund and the- fund for public roads,” with a provision that if at any time this fund is insufficient “to pay the monthly salaries as they become due, the commissioners may borrow temporarily the amount necessary from the general county fund.” Section 13 repeals “All laws and parts of law in conflict herewith.”
This act was ratified 29 January, 1915, and was clearly expressed to put in force the will of the people of that county, doubtless made after full public discussion, and enacted by the Legislature at the instance of the Senator and Representative from that county, that on the first Monday in December, 1916, all fees and commissions to county officials theretofore authorized by any law or custom whatsoever should be paid in to the county fund and from that day said officials should receive in lieu thereof the salaries authorized in the act as their sole compensation for any and all services, whether ordinary or extra services, and whether under existing laws or laws thereafter to be enacted. The only exceptions made are that the deputy sheriffs in the townships, other than Hillsboro, shall continue to receive fees for serving process and commissions on execution sales, and that the clerk of the court should continue to receive fees up to the first Monday in December, 1918. With this exception the act was to be in full force and effect on the first Monday in December, 1916. The reason for the exemption of the clerk till December, 1918, was because his term of office, unlike that of the other officers, did not expire in December, 1916.
Under the Constitution the term -of the defendant as sheriff expired on the first Monday in December, 1916. He was notified by this statute, ratified 29 January, 1915, that on said first Monday in December, 1916, all perquisites and fees of every kind allowed to the sheriff of Orange by virtue of his office or any statute or custom to the contrary should be paid into the county treasury. It was within the power of the Legislature to have made this change take effect on the ratification of the act. But with great liberality the General Assembly made the act to take effect as to all the officers, except the clerk, on the first Monday in December, 1916, and, as to the clerk, two years later. The defendant, therefore had nearly two years notice that all fees and commissions pertaining to his office should be turned into the county treasury after the first Monday in December, 1916.
*386This act was the expression of the sentiment of the county of Orange that compensation-by fees to the public officers was excessive and that' there should be substituted the payment of fixed and definite salaries, and that all fees and commissions theretofore received should be paid into the public treasury, out of which these salaries were to be taken, and the surplus should be devoted to the public schools and public roads. With great liberality the act was not to take effect until the dates named, and in the meantime the sheriff then in office was allowed to receive the commissions on the collection of taxes for 1914, 1915, and even on the taxes of 1916, collected before the first Monday in December of that year.
The object of this legislation was for the relief of the people from what they deemed excessive compensation, and should not be construed as putting upon them additional and unnecessary expenses. It is no aid in construing the language, and the evident intent of this statute, to quote decisions made prior to its enactment under which the sheriff after the expiration of his term received compensation for collecting the tax list, for, as already stated, the sole purpose of the statute was to change the old system and to substitute a new system by the payment of salaries.
The Legislature had full power to make the act apply to one or to all officers, -or to some and to exempt others. It exempted the clerk in this case till December, 1918, because the term of the clerk, unlike that of the sheriff and other county officers, did not expire in December, 1916.
The power of the Legislature to change the compensation of all county officers has been settled beyond question since the decision in Mial v. Ellington, 134 N. C., 131, which overruled the doctrine which had been laid down in Hoke v. Henderson, 15 N. C., 1, that “office is property,” and that the . public had no control over such matters after an officer had got an office in his hands. The power of the Legislature as to this very matter of changing compensation by fees into compensation by salary is fully recognized in Mills v. Deaton, 170 N. C., 388. The language of the present statute expresses its intention as clearly as the power is unquestioned.
In Mills v. Deaton, 170 N. C., 386, Brown, J., said (p. 388) : “The explicit language leaves no room for construction. When the sheriff received the tax list, 1 October, 1914, he was required by law to collect them upon a commission basis, and when that was changed to a salary, the sheriff was likewise compelled to collect the taxes for the salary fixed. It does not matter that the present sheriff was elected, or whether some one else was elected in his place, the office of sheriff is one andf indivisible, and the salary fixed for it under this statute is intended to cover all the duties
*387Tbe object of government is not to furnish the honors and the emoluments of office as a favor to individuals, nor have officers any property rights in an office or its compensation. Public officers are (not as a figure of speech, but as a matter of fact and of law) public servants, and except in those cases in which the Constitution forbids a change of compensation the Legislature can alter, increase, or diminish, at will, the compensation of any public officer. The officer has the alternative of resigning if he so wishes.
It appears on the argument here that prior to the enactment of this statute the emoluments of the sheriff’s office in Orange County aggregated about $4,000 annually. This chapter 46, Public-Local Laws 1915, substituted for all the fees and commissions formerly allowed the sheriff (amounting annually to $4,000) a salary of $1,600, with other allowances for deputies (as above stated) and premium on his bond, making an aggregate cost of that office to the county treasury of about $2,400.
The defendant in this case had already served two terms as sheriff of Orange and was entering upon the third term .at the time this act was ratified, in January, 1915. It gave him nearly two years notice that' at the expiration of his term in December, 1916, all officials would be paid by salaries and that after that date all fees and all commissions theretofore allowed must be paid into the public treasury.
Under the defendant’s claim, if allowed, the county, instead of making an economy of $1,600 per annum in the sheriff’s office beginning on the first Monday in December, 1916, will have to pay more than double: that is, the sheriff whose term had expired will be paid at the rate of at least $4,000 (and, indeed, more, for it is claimed by him that the greater part of his fees were in the collection, of the tax list) until all the taxes of 1916 are collected, while at the same time the new sheriff will be receiving the full salary and expenses of $2,400 per annum out of the treasury, thus costing the county at the- rate of at least $6,400 per annum. It is hardly conceivable that so intelligent a population as that of the county of Orange would have asked the Legislature to continue the emoluments of the sheriff, whose term has expired, at the rate of at least $4,000 a year and at the same time tax the public at the rate of $2,400 per annum for the sheriff who is in office. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Senator and the Member from Orange advocated a statute leading to any such result, or that the Legislature could have so understood in enacting this statute, whose object was to relieve the taxpayers of the county, and not to increase their burdens.
On the first Monday in December, 1916, by virtue of the statute, the salary of $1,600 to the sheriff, and incidentals of $800 other allowances, *388became a charge on the county treasury of Orange. At the same time the county was to be recouped by the payment into the public treasury of “all the commissions and fees of every kind” received after that date by the sheriff’s office, which were at least at the rate of $4,000. The defendant contends that because prior to the change made by the act of January, 1915, the outgoing sheriff received the fees for collecting the tax list, so far as he had not already collected it, that the court should now read into this statute an intention that the former sheriff should have the commissions for collecting the taxes, when there is no indication whatever of such intention shown in the statute,' which is expressly to the contrary. This would leave the county only the other fees of the sheriff (which it appears amounted to less than $20 in ninety days from the first Monday in December) to recoup the salary allowed the new sheriff and his deputies of $200 per month, for the process fees continue to go to the sheriff’s deputies, except as to Hillsboro Township.
The county of Orange and its taxpayers, by the construction the defendant asks, are penalized heavily for wishing to make the change which so many other counties have had adopted to their satisfaction and to economy in the public expenditure. In Orange the same statute is made a heavy loss to the public instead of an economy.
The Public-Local Laws of 1911, 1913, 1915 show that there were 48 acts putting county officers on salary (and there have been others since), only 9 of which have any express provision requiring officers to turn over their books and papers at the end of the term. The other 37 rely upon the common-law rule which treats that as a necessary incident of leaving any office. Only two of these 48 statutes permit the outgoing sheriff to retain the tax list of the preceding year. Such enactment is not in this statute, and its absence leaves no ground for the defendant’s contention that he is entitled to do so notwithstanding the clear-cut, incisive substitution, at the date fixed, of the new system of salaries for the former custom.
The collection of taxes is not an inherent part of the duties of sheriff. 37 Cyc., 1192. It was not so in England, from which we derived our system of laws, nor is it so in many of the States of this Union. 35 Gyc., 1489. ■ But if it were, it was competent for the Legislature to change the method of compensation. The people of Orange had the right to ask for such change and the Legislature had the power to order it. In doing so they prescribed the date when the change should take place and that after that time the sheriff should receive no fees whatever for the collection of taxes, but allowed him, instead, a salary which began at that date for all the sheriff’s duties of every kind. The *389act not only does not permit, but prohibits, the allowance, either to the old sheriff or the new, of any fees or commissions, for any work whatever, since the first Monday in December, 1916, beyond the salary and allowance therein provided for him and his deputies.
After the first Monday in December, 1916, the act permits no commissions to any one for collecting taxes, and the sheriff whose term has expired cannot claim them, any more than the new sheriff can claim them after his term shall expire in December, 1918.
The plaintiffs are the commissioners of Orange, and their attorney in this case was the Senator from Orange in 1915 (Mr. Nash), who, expressing the will of the people of that county, drafted and procured the passage of this act, whose intent, very clearly expressed, provides that after the first Monday in December, 1916, all fees, and commissions theretofore paid to county officers should be paid into the county treasury (section 12), out of which fund the salaries provided in the act shall be paid to the officers, and (section 9) that the officers shall receive after that date “no compensation or allowance whatsoever” except as otherwise provided in the act, which exception specifies that the clerk shall continue to receive fees for two years thereafter, and that the deputy sheriff shall receive process and commissions on executions in certain townships. Neither the former sheriff nor any other officer or any other fees or commissions are excepted. The object of this action is to enforce the provisions of this statute enacted after full discussion at the instance of the people of Orange County in a matter concerning their own county and restricting their county expenses.
The cardinal idea, repeated again and again throughout the act and which runs through it as its warp and woof, is that on the date named '(nearly two years ahead) the system previously in force, by which county officials were compensated by fees and commissions, was absolutely and utterly changed, and fixed salaries substituted. The slight exception made in the act, of process fees to the deputy sheriff in some of the townships, emphasizes the statement in the act that “except as hereinbefore provided” the officers shall thereafter receive no compensation or allowance whatsoever, under existing laws or laws hereinafter enacted, except the salaries named in the act.
The act places all the duties of the office on the new sheriff, and all the compensation is his, after the date specified. If the old sheriff insists on collecting the taxes, the commissions, nevertheless, must be paid into the county treasury, for the act provides that fees and commissions are all to be paid into the treasury and out of them the salaries, to a small amount, are to be paid. Least of all is there any indication that the former sheriff, whose term has expired, shall nevertheless be allowed *390to receive several thousand dollars in commissions notwithstanding the act, while the taxpayers, are to pay the new sheriff and his deputies $200 per month. The defendant has not pointed out a line nor a word in the act which justifies him in making such claim, which is contrary to the whole scope of the .act and the prohibitions therein.