Court Opinion

ID: 9637567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:10:27.789421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:57.806599
License: Public Domain

HUTCHINSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The carefully designed legislative scheme in the Act of July 1, 1937, P.L. 2611, as amended by the Act of April 15, 1943, P.L. 53, No. 32, 53 P.S. §§ 7231-7235, was intended to authorize “political subdivisions, other than cities of the first class, to set-off delinquent taxes, municipal claims and judgments held thereby, and penalties, interest, and cost due thereon, against claims and accounts due by such political subdivisions” and to provide a procedure for doing so. Title of the Act of July 1, 1937, as amended Act of April 15, 1943. The legislature gave the municipalities this authority to aid in their collection of claims “arising out of, or resulting from a tax assessed, service supplied, work done, or improvement authorized and undertaken, by a municipality____” Act of May 16, 1923, P.L. 207, § 1, as amended, 53 P.S. § 7101. It was never intended that this scheme be utilized to circumvent the exclusive authority vested in the Public Utility Commission “to order any [rail highway] crossing ... to be relocated or altered”, 66 Pa. C.S. § 2702, or to determine the allocation of related costs, 66 Pa.C.S. § 2704. See City of Philadelphia v. Philadelphia Electric Company, 504 Pa. 312, 473 A.2d 997 (1984). The majority opinion now invites all of Pennsylvania’s municipalities to ignore the Commission’s authority in similar *65fashion. By denying the Commission’s right to mandamus, set forth in 66 Pa.C.S. § 502, in support of its own unappealed orders in this case, the majority has unwittingly but effectively eroded that body’s authority in this type of case.