Court Opinion

ID: 9572869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:45:14.913957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:34:30.992193
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice
(concurring and dissenting):
I concur in that part of the majority opinion dealing with interest, but dissent from that portion which upholds the validity of the “assistant assessor” designation.
Since 1896, when Utah became a state, county officers have been and are three county commissioners, treasurer, sheriff, clerk, auditor, recorder, attorney, surveyor, and assessor. Utah Code Ann. § 17-16-2 (1987). However, the Board of County Commissioners is given the power to consolidate any of the above-mentioned offices. Utah Code Ann. § 17-16-3 (1987). When offices are consolidated, only one person is elected to fill the offices so consolidated. Then he or she must take the oath and give the bond required for and discharge all the duties pertaining to each office. This Court has held that in the absence of formal consolidation of two offices, they must be regarded as separate and distinct and cannot be held by one person. State v. Woolfenden, 26 Utah 167, 72 P. 690 (1903). County officers have always been elected in partisan elections.
Since territorial days, the duties of each county officer have been prescribed by statute in separate chapters of the Code. See Duties of County Assessor, § 17-17-1; County Attorney, § 17-18-1 to -4; County Auditor, § 17-19-1 to -28; County Clerk, § 17-20-1 to -5; Recorder, § 17-21-1 to -25; Sheriff, § 17-22-1 to -26; County Surveyor, § 17-23-1 to -11; County Treasurer, § 17-24-1 to -21. Each county officer is charged with and performs his or her own part of the operation of county government. The duties of various county officers complement each other, and their activities combine to make up the whole. While the division of duties and responsibilities of the various county officers contained in our statutes is not the only plan of division which could have been devised, it is the one that has existed for nearly a century in our state.
*1269By a further provision of our statutes, section 17-16-7 (enacted in 1896),1 every county officer may appoint “as many deputies and assistants as may be necessary for the prompt and faithful discharge of the duties of his office," subject to the consent of the Board of County Commissioners. (Emphasis added.) Until the adoption of merit systems for county employees in recent years, it was a common occurrence for the deputies and assistants of an elected county officer to have their employment terminated when the officer was defeated at election. The victor who often belonged to a different political party then appointed his or her own deputies and assistants.
Just seven years after the legislature enacted section 17-16-7, authorizing each county officer to appoint “as many deputies and assistants as may be necessary for the prompt and faithful discharge of the duties of his office,” the legislature in 1903 enacted sections 17-19-15 and -16 (then known as chapter 131, Laws of Utah 1903), directing that the “salaries of the county assessor and his deputies and assistants” and the “salaries of the county treasurer and his deputies and assistants” be apportioned among the various taxing entities within the county. It is significant that the legislature in this 1903 enactment in specifying whose salaries should be borne by the taxing entities used the precise terms that it had seven years earlier in authorizing county officers to appoint deputies and assistants. In each case, it was “his deputies and assistants” — not the deputies and assistants of other elected officers.
With that backdrop of how county government is structured and operates in Utah, and the use by the legislature of identical language in specifying the appointing powers of county officers and in apportioning salaries, I cannot join the long stretch made by the majority in construing the “deputies and assistants” of an elected assessor mentioned in sections 17-19-15 and -16 to include persons who are hired by, supervised by, and paid out of the budget of another elected county officer and who physically work in the office of the latter. Such a construction subverts the plain meaning of that statute. The majority opinion seeks to justify its result because employees in the recorder’s office perform work which is “functionally related” to the work and duties of the assessor. Of course, that is true. The county survey- or serves the county commission in laying out roads. Their work, too, is functionally related. Many other examples could be given. All the work conducted in the various county offices complements work in other offices. It has never been claimed that the work of the county officers has been divided according to strict logical or functional lines. It is,.however, the division made by the legislature of this state and territory and which has existed for at least one hundred years. If a different division should be made, the legislature, not the county commission or the courts, should do it.
For seventy-eight years following the enactment of section 17-19-15, the Salt Lake County Assessor observed the clear meaning of that statute and apportioned to the taxing entities in Salt Lake County only the salaries of the assessor and the treasurer and the deputies and assistants who were hired by them, supervised by them, and paid out of the budget of their offices. However, in 1981, a committee which had been appointed by the Salt Lake County Commission to find additional sources of revenue for the county suggested that the salaries of other county employees should be apportioned to and borne by the taxing entities. Instead of going to the legislature and having the change made in the statute, the Salt Lake County Commission bypassed that process and instead had the county assessor designate twenty-eight county employees who worked in the offices of other elected officials as “his assistants.”
We have heretofore recognized past administrative practice as a basis for statutory interpretation. In Salt Lake City v. Salt Lake County, 568 P.2d 738 (Utah 1977), a Salt Lake County clerk and sheriff initiated a policy of charging Salt Lake City *1270fees for the filing of suits and the service of process. The relevant statute was ambiguous as to the legality of this policy. This Court, basing its decision in part on the long-standing administrative practice of the clerk and the sheriff under which no fees were charged, said, “[I]n case of any uncertainty or ambiguity in the statute, a reasonable administrative interpretation and practice should be given some weight.” Id. at 741-42. This is particularly true when such an administrative interpretation and practice has persisted for a long time without any legislative correction or change. It is significant that in 1970, section 17-19-15 was amended to provide that the “costs of technical assistants and appraisal aid computed by the State Tax Commission” should also be apportioned to the various tax entities in the county. No enlargement, however, was made to the language in the 1903 enactment respecting the salaries of the county assessor and “his deputies and assistants” and the salaries of the county treasurer and “his deputies and assistants.” We noted in Board of Education of Granite School District v. Salt Lake County, 659 P.2d 1030 (Utah 1983), that sections 17-19-15 and -16 may not be broad enough by their terms to allow a county to collect from the taxing entities the full cost of its expenses of assessment and collection. We eschewed the invitation of Salt Lake County to go beyond the plain terms of the statute and add additional costs as a matter of equity. We observed that “the legislature has specifically defined what tax collection expenses the county may pass through to a taxing entity in [Utah Code Ann. §§ 17-19-15 through -17 (1953) ]. It is reasonable that in enacting these statutory provisions, the legislature advisedly limited the amount which school districts would be required to reimburse.” Id. at 1037.
The “assistant assessor” designation made here is flagrantly egregious because it flies in the face of the statutory responsibilities of the elected officers who hired, supervised, and paid the “assistant assessors.” For example, twelve of the twenty-eight “assistant assessors” were employees of the recorder, working in the plat department. Their responsibility was to maintain and keep current on a day-to-day basis all new subdivision dedications, all conveyances of title, and the change of ownership and legal description of all real property within the county. In other words, these plats reflect the current ownership, size, and dimensions of each parcel of real property. The maintenance of these plats, however, has been expressly designated by the legislature by statute as the duty of the recorder, not the assessor. Utah Code Ann. § 17-21-21 (1987), provides:
In all counties the County Recorder shall prepare and keep present-ownership maps and plats drawn to a convenient scale, which shall at all times show the record owners of each tract of land in the county, together with the description of the tract.
Section 17-21-22 provides that each year the recorder shall prepare copies of said ownership, maps, plats, and descriptions, showing record owners at noon on the 1st day of January and transmit those copies to the county assessor. The assessor compiles the property tax notices based on those maps and plats. Thus, the very tasks performed by employees of the recorder which were relied upon by the Salt Lake County Commission and which are now relied upon by the majority of this Court to make them “assistant assessors” are in fact statutory duties of the recorder. When the legislature has by statute assigned certain duties to the recorder, the County Commission cannot by resolution nor can this Court by judicial fiat make persons who perform those tasks in that office the “assistant” of any other elected official. The majority recognizes this principle in disallowing employees of the treasurer to be designated “assistant assessors.” It fails, however, to extend the principle to the recorder's employees.
Moreover, the maps and plats made by the recorder are not just used by the assessor. Testimony was adduced that they are available to members of the general public and are used extensively by departments of the incorporated cities within the county, the county surveyor, the county highway *1271department, title insurance companies, ab-stractors, and real estate brokers and salesmen.
In sum, I cannot join in giving judicial approbation to a revenue-grabbing ruse which ignores the separate statutory duties and responsibilities of the various county officers and which sanctions a county resolution creating “assistant assessors” out of persons hired by, supervised by, and paid out of the budget of other elected county officers.2 Had the legislature intended the broad construction given by the majority to sections 17-19-15 and -16, it could have so stated by encompassing all persons in county government whose employment duties are functionally related to the assessment and collection of taxes. But the legislature did not do so, and for seventy-eight years, no one apparently had any question as to the meaning of the statute.
DURHAM, J., concurs in the concurring and dissenting opinion of HOWE, J.

. See § 546 C.L. 1907.

. The writer is reminded of Lincoln’s observation that calling a horse’s tail a leg does not make it a leg.