Court Opinion

ID: 9788364
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:44:46.48089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:51.825533
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
with whom
BRYNER, Chief Justice, joins, dissenting.
In my view AS 42.40.3901 is a direct legislative grant to the Railroad of immunity from local zoning. The power to adopt “exclusive rules governing land use” for railroad land necessarily means that local governments that might otherwise be able to regulate railroad lands are excluded.2 Today the court disavows the only alternative to this view that it offered in its prior opinion. The alternative interpretation was that “the term ‘exclusive’ could also be read as a choice-of-law provision — if the Railroad Board promulgated rules conflicting with local ordinances, the Railroad’s regulations would govern, but in the absence of a conflict, local rules are unaffected.”3
I think that the court at this point should recognize that it has retracted, and thus changed, an important part of its prior opinion. The court’s retraction means that it was *1205originally mistaken in thinking that the grant of exclusive rule-making authority to the Railroad left some room for local regulation of railroad lands. The court should now construe section .390 in accordance with its plain language as confirmed by clear legislative history and hold that section .390 excludes railroad land from municipal zoning.
Is there something else that the “exclusive rules” provision of section .390 could mean? Today’s opinion offers two new alternatives. But, as I discuss in the following section, neither is plausible.
I.
As the first new alternative, the court states that an interpretation offered by the Municipality is “another possible interpretation.”4 The Municipality’s interpretation is that section .390 governs conveyances of railroad lands. But the explicit subject of section .390 is “exclusive rules” governing railroad land use, not transfers of interests in railroad lands. The important subject of transfers of interest in railroad lands is governed by other sections of the act, primarily AS 42.40.285(1) and (4) and AS 42.40.350(c) and (d).5 Since land conveyances and land use are separate subjects treated in separate statutory sections, the view that section .390 governs conveyances, when it states that it governs land use, seems frivolous.
The second new alternative interpretation offered by the court is that the land use rules authorized by section .390 are to ensure “that the Railroad has the power to control activities on its land even when its wishes to deviate from those of its permittees,” but that these land use rules are subject to local land use regulations.6 It is of course true that one purpose of section .390 is to ensure that thé Railroad can control the land use activities of its lessees and permittees. The power thus granted is a regulatory power granted to the Railroad ás a government entity. It is to be exercised, like zoning, “for the common health, safety, and welfare of the public,” (as the second sentence of AS 42.40.390 makes clear) rather than as a landlord’s power to specify in leases and permits how land should be used. However, the second part of the court’s interpretation, that the land use regulatory power granted to the Railroad by section .390 is subject to the land use regulatory power of any municipality which encompasses railroad lands, is not a reasonably possible interpretation for three reasons.
First, the interpretation reads the word “exclusive” out of section .390. Since the Railroad’s power to regulate its land is “exclusive,” it follows that a municipality may not also regulate them.7
*1206Second, the interpretation requires us to believe that the legislature intended that two separate governmental entities — a municipality and the Railroad — would both have the authority to zone railroad land. Imposing a system in which two government entities have the authority to zone the same land would be so irrational as to be absurd, especially when there is no built-in mechanism for resolving conflicts between the zoning entities.8 The interpretation thus conflicts with the rule of construction that statutes should not be interpreted to reach absurd results.9
Finally, this interpretation is not only textually untenable and absurd in result, it also conflicts with the legislative history. That history was examined in detail in the dissenting opinion in Eklutna 17.10 To summarize it briefly, section .390 was originally drafted in a legislative session in which the Alaska Railroad Corporation Act was considered but not passed. In 1984, when the act was passed, the Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee was initially uncertain as to what the section meant. As today’s opinion states, a legislative attorney advised the committee that section .390 “was either intended to grant zoning authority to the Railroad or to exclude railroad property from zoning regulations.” 11 During subsequent meetings concerning section .390 this interpretation was never questioned, although the desirability of retaining section .390 was. In the end, however, section .390 was approved when, on the final day of committee deliberations Senator Halford argued that it was needed to “protect the railroad’s operations from local zoning restrictions.”12 Senator Gilman, who argued for the deletion of section .390, said that it originally was put in “to establish some rationale for why the railroad should get a tax-exempt bonding authority” and opined that this was no longer necessary.13 But Senator Faiks argued that tax exemption was still a problem. Hers was the last word and section .390 was retained. As the dissent in Eklutna II states:
In order to have tax-exempt bonding status, it was believed that the Railroad needed land use regulation powers comparable to those of a local government. Such powers were granted. It does not matter whether the powers were granted primarily so that the Railroad could issue tax-free bonds or so that the Railroad would not be disturbed in its operations by municipal zoning. Whatever the dominant motive may have been, the grant of exclusive land use regulatory power was the same.[14]
The most valuable and least controversial use of legislative history is to show the problem, or the problems, that the legislature was addressing. When the problem is known, the effect of language that might otherwise be obscure often becomes apparent.15 Here *1207the history of section .390 shows that it was meant to address two, and only two, problems. One was the need to ensure that the Railroad would be recognized as a tax-exempt entity entitled to issue tax-free bonds. The other was the need to protect the Railroad in its operations from impediments imposed by local zoning. Section .390 was the solution to both problems. In order to establish the bona fides of the Railroad as a government entity entitled to tax-exempt treatment, the Railroad was granted exclusive land use regulatory power. In order to protect the Railroad from operational interference from local zoning, the Railroad was granted the same exclusive power. The legislative history thus unmistakably shows that section .390 was meant as a grant to the Railroad of exclusive land use regulatory power. There is, quite simply, no history suggesting that concurrent land use authority was intended by the legislature, much less concurrent authority that would give precedence to municipal zoning in case of a conflict.
This new concurrent authority with municipal zoning given precedence interpretation is the reverse of the now-rejected alternative interpretation offered by the court in Eklut-na II. That alternative also posited concurrent zoning authority for municipalities and the Railroad. If particular railroad land was covered by municipal zoning and the Railroad had not passed land use regulations governing that land, it would be controlled by the municipal zoning regulations. But upon passage by the Railroad of land use regulations governing the land, the railroad regulations would take precedence. The now-rejected interpretation, in other words, read “exclusive” to state a rule of priority rather than a rule of exclusion. That is an unusual interpretation of “exclusive,” but at least the word was not completely ignored. Currently, however, the court appears to be saying that a municipality and the Railroad both have concurrent zoning authority and in eases where both have acted and there is a conflict the municipal regulations, rather than the railroad regulations, prevail. The word “exclusive” has gone missing.
II.
I also think that the court has made a fundamental mistake as to the nature of the “balancing of interests” test. That test, which was first announced by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in Rutgers, State University v. Piluso,16 rejects traditional approaches to the problem that arises when one government entity proposes an activity that may violate the zoning rules of another government entity. The traditional approaches inferred immunity from zoning based on (1) the status of the competing entities (the superior sovereign test), (2) the nature of the proposed activity (the governmental/proprietary dichotomy), or (3) the fact that the proposed activity was or was not supported by the power to condemn property (the eminent domain test). The Rutgers balancing of interests test rejects the rote or “ritualistic” practice of inferring immunity based on the presence or absence of the above factors.17 Instead, the question of immunity is to be answered by considering many factors, including those on which the traditional approaches are based, that may be relevant to the particular question of which governmental entity, should prevail. The balancing of interests test thus rejects the practice of inferring legislative intent from just one factor, in favor of inferring legislative intent from a number of factors that are thought to be relevant to a resolution of particular land use conflicts between government entities.18
*1208The underlying premise of the balancing of interests' test (and the traditional approaches) is that the state legislature has not actually addressed the subject of whether the entity proposing the activity should or should not be subject to local zoning. The inquiry is in essence “what the legislature would have done had it considered the question.”19 The test entails a search for hypothetical legislative intent by using factors relevant to local and broader needs “[w]hen the state legislature is, silent on the subject” because “it wasn’t thinking about the problem.”20
Since there can be no doubt that the legislature was thinking about, the problem of whether the. Railroad should be immune from local zoning when it considered section .390,21 the premise of the balancing of interests test is not satisfied here. As a result, the court’s duty is to determine what the legislature meant when it enacted the “exclusive rules” provision. The balancing of interests test is a rule that rejects rote inferences of immunity drawn from collateral legislation, but it is not a rule that changes a court’s fundamental duty to interpret statutes that directly address the subject of immunity. Balancing of interests applies in the absence of a directly relevant statute, but it is not a rule intended to resolve ambiguities in statutes that address the subject of immunity.22
The Supreme Court of New Jersey designed the Rutgers balancing test to prohibit courts from using legal relationships that do not directly concern land use control to draw inferences about one government entity’s amenability to zoning by another. Today’s opinion has converted the Rutgers balancing test into a rule of statutory construction precluding the immunization of one entity from the zoning power of another unless the land use control law states the immunization objective with a high standard of clarity.23 This conversion of the Rutgers balancing test into a clear-statement rule reflects a presumption in favor of local zoning power over state land use. Judicially created clear-statement rules are based on a presumption that a particular result is disfavored, thus requiring laws to make a clear statement *1209that such a result is intended.24 That the Rutgers balancing test cannot be interpreted to be a clear-statement rule is clear from the Rutgers opinion. Far from reflecting a presumption disfavoring state land uses when they conflict with local zoning, the New Jersey court stated in Rutgers that state functions and agencies would generally, not be subject to restriction or control by local land use regulations.25 The Rutgers court stated:
With regard to a state university ... there can be little doubt that, as an instrumentality of the state performing an essential governmental function for the benefit of all the people of the state, the Legislature would not intend that its growth and development should be subject to restriction or control by local land use regulation. Indeed, such mil generally be true in the case of all state junctions and agencies.[26]
Rather than use a rule of statutory construction that gives courts permission to ignore relevant statutes that speak to the question of the allocation of the power to control land use unless the courts find them to be “clear” — a rule that is not part of the Rutgers balancing test — the court should, in my opinion, use customary rules of statutory interpretation in order to determine what the legislature actually meant when it addressed the subject of the Railroad’s authority to adopt exclusive rules governing railroad land use.
To sum up, I think that the court erred in Eklutna II when it declined to interpret séction .390 to exempt railroad land from local zoning. Such an interpretation is required by our customary touchstones of statutory interpretation, the language of the section as confirmed by its unusually clear legislative history.27 The court has now found it necessary to recant the only alternative interpretation of section .390 that it offered in Eklutna II. I think this should signal to the court that it made a mistake in Eklutna II and that the mistake should now be corrected. Instead, the court has offered two new alternative interpretations. These new interpretations stray so far afield from our traditional methods of statutory interpretation as to be completely implausible, in my opinion. The court is able to justify its failure to reach a conclusive interpretation of the meaning of section .390 by creating a clear-statement rule of statutory construction. This rule allows the court to brush aside any statute that addresses the land use rule-making authority of entities other than municipal zoning boards unless the statute clearly exempts the other entities from municipal zoning. This is a distortion of the Rutgers balancing test. Our established rules of statutory interpretation do *1210not require statutory clarity — where clarity exists there is little need for the rules. In my view, when a normal approach is taken to the question of the meaning of section .390 only one interpretation is reasonably possible.
For these reasons, I dissent.

.AS 42.40.390 provides:
The board may adopt exclusive rules governing land use by parties having interests in or permits for land owned or managed by the corporation. The power conferred by this section is exercised for the common health, safety, and welfare of the public and to the extent constitutionally permissible, may not be limited by the terms and conditions of leases, contracts, or other transactions.

. This position was explained in more detail, and supported by legislative history, in the dissenting opinion in Native Village of Eklutna v. Alaska Railroad Corp. (Eklutna II), 87 P.3d 41, 62-65 (Alaska 2004) (Matthews, J., joined by Bryner, J., dissenting).

. Id. at 47.

. Op. at 1199-1200.

. These statutes provide:
AS 42.40.285(1) and (4):
Unless the legislature approves the action by law, the corporation may not
(1) exchange, donate, sell, or otherwise convey its entire interest in land;
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(4) lease land for a period in excess of 55 years unless the corporation reserves the right to terminate the lease if the land is needed for railroad purposes[.]
AS 42.40.350(c) and (d):
(c) The corporation may lease, subject to AS 42.40.285 and (d) of this section, grant easements in or permits for, or otherwise authorize use of portions of rail land. However, the corporation may not convey its entire interest in rail land except as provided in AS 42.40.285, 42.40.370(d) and 42.40.400.
(d) A lease or disposal of land approved by the legislature under AS 42.40.285 by the corporation to a party other than the state shall be made at fair market value as determined by a qualified appraiser or by competitive bid.

. Op. at 1200-01.

. In response to this point the court states that "exclusive” as used in the statute merely means that lessees and permittees do not also have regulatory power to adopt land use rules. Op. at 1200-01. But we know both as a matter of logic and from the legislative history of section .390 that this is not what the legislature had in mind. Lessees and permittees do not have governmental land use regulatory authority. Therefore there is no need to exclude them from its exercise. When the legislature grants zoning power to municipalities .it does not find it necessary to state that the power is exclusive of powers that might otherwise be exercised by municipal lessees, because lessees lack zoning power. And we know from the legislative history that section .390 was intended to grant the Railroad the land use regulatory authority of a government. See the discussion of legislative history of section .390 infra at pages 1206-08.

. In response to this point the court states that "government entities must commonly contend with conflicts of jurisdiction.” Op. at 1200-01. This generality is correct, but it does not detract from the point that it would be absurd to give two separate government entities the authority to zone the same land. The court offers neither a rationale for, nor an example of, a statute that bestows conflicting zoning authority.

. Sherman v. Holiday Constr. Co., 435 P.2d 16, 19 (Alaska 1967) (it is a judicial duty "to construe statutes so as to avoid results glaringly absurd").

. 87 P.3d at 62-65 (Matthews, J., joined by Bryner, J., dissenting).

. Op. at 1199.

. Eklutna II, 87 P.3d at 63-64 (dissenting opinion).

. Id. at 64.

. Id.

. See, e.g., 2A Norman J. Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 4502, at 15 (6th ed. 2000) ("Before the true meaning of a statute can be determined where there is genuine uncertainty concerning its application, consideration must be given to the problem in society to which the legislature addressed itself.”); Stephen Breyer, On the Uses of Legislative History in Interpreting Statutes, 65 S. Cal. L.Rev. 845, 848-49 (1992) (noting that "legislative history helps a court understand the context and purpose of a statute” which can "clarify ambiguity" and can help to “avoid[ ] absurd results"); City of Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams, 544 U.S. 113, 125 S.Ct. 1453, 1459, 161 L.Ed.2d 316 (2005) (concurring opinion of Breyer, J., joined by three other justices) (advocating examination of "context, not just literal text” as a guide "to Congress intent”) (discussed in ICHRRA v. Fairbanks N. Star Borough, 135 P.3d 1000, 1010 n. 5 (Alaska 2006) (Matthews, J., concurring)).

. 60 N.J. 142, 286 A.2d 697 (1972).

. Id. at 701.

. Id. at 702. Because immunity, or the lack thereof, is inferred from a number of factors that may be relevant to the ultimate policy decision as to the location of a particular project, it is easy to see why the balancing test is preferred by many authorities to the traditional approaches that focus on factors that may be irrelevant to a rational policy choice. The drawback of the balancing test is that ultimately the policy choice is made by courts, rather than by executive or legislative authorities. Issues involving balancing local interests with state-wide needs are not readily amenable to judicial analysis. This drawback can be avoided where the balancing decision maker is an agency that is legally competent to make complicated policy choices. The American Law Institute’s Model Land Development Code creates regional agencies to make such decisions, *1208and a state-wide board to hear appeals from regional agencies. See Model Land Dev.Code §§ 7-304-504 (1975). The general Alaska statutory system also avoids setting up the courts as the ultimate policy decision maker in inter-governmental zoning disputes, without the bureaucratic overlay of the Model Code. Under AS 35.30.020 and .030 state agencies are required to comply with local zoning subject to a waiver in cases of overriding state interest. The governor makes the decision as to whether an overriding state interest exists. But this sensible system does not apply to the Railroad because a provision of the Alaska Railroad Corporation Act states that AS 35 does not apply to the Railroad. AS 42.40.920(b)(3). It is one of the ironies of this case that the legislative efforts to make the Railroad less subject to local zoning control than other slate agencies — the status quo for the Railroad as a former federal entity was that it was not subject to local zoning — has resulted in the Railroad becoming more subject to local control; or, at least, that it must endure a less certain (and more expensive and time-consuming) method of obtaining an overriding state interest waiver than other agencies.

. City of Crown Point v. Lake County, 510 N.E.2d 684, 689 (Ind.1987).

. ■ City of Temple Terrace v. Hillsborough Ass’n for Retarded Citizens, 322 So.2d 571, 578-79 (Fla. App.1975).

. See supra pages 1206-08.

. E.g., City of Rapid City v. Pennington County, 669 N.W.2d 120 (S.D.2003). This case involved a dispute between a county that proposed to locate a jail-work release facility in a city in violation of the city’s zoning and comprehensive plan. The governing statute provided that no public building "shall be constructed” without city planning commission approval, but another section provided that planning commission "disapproval may be overruled by” the board authorizing the building. Id. at 122 (discussing SDCL 11-6-19 and 11-6-21). Over a dissent that argued that South Dakota's previously adopted balancing test should apply, the court construed the statute to mean that the county was not subject to the city's zoning ordinance with respect to the creation of the jail-work release facility. Id. at 124-26.

. This is evident from the introductory language of today's opinion where the court, in explaining Eklutna II, states that because "the legislature did not clearly indicate its intention to exempt the Railroad from municipal zoning laws when it enacted the Alaska Railroad Corporation Act ... the Railroad must apply for a conditional use permit” under the zoning code of the Municipali*1209ty of Anchorage. Op. at 1194-95 (emphasis added).

. See Blatchford v. Native Vill. of Noatak, 501 U.S. 775, 790, 111 S.Ct. 2578, 115 L.Ed.2d 686 (1991) (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (noting, in disapproval, that so-called clear-statement rules "are designed as hurdles” against disfavored results) (internal quotations omitted); Dan M. Ka-han, Is Chevron Relevant to Federal Criminal Law?, 110 Harv. L. Rev 469, 504 (1996) (reporting that in the face of a clear-statement rule, "only express [legislative] action will suffice to establish the disfavored reading”).

. Rutgers, 286 A.2d at 703.

. Id. (emphasis added).

. See, concerning our customary methods of statutory interpretation, Homer Elec. Ass’n v. Towsley, 841 P.2d 1042, 1043-44 (Alaska 1992):
Generally, the most reliable guide to the meaning of a statute is the words of the statute construed in accordance with their common usage. Lagos v. City & Borough of Sitka, 823 P.2d 641, 643 (Alaska 1991). However, even where the statutory language considered alone seems to leave room reasonably for only one meaning, we nonetheless may consult legislative history and the rules of statutory construction, realizing that sometimes language that seems clear in the abstract takes on a different meaning when viewed in context. North Slope Borough v. Sohio Petroleum Corp., 585 P.2d 534, 540 (Alaska 1978); State v. Alex, 646 P.2d 203, 208 n. 4 (Alaska 1982). In such cases the legislative history and rules of construction must present a compelling case that the literal meaning of the language of the statute is not what the legislature intended. University of Alaska v. Geistauts, 666 P.2d 424, 428 n. 5 (Alaska 1983) ("Where a statute’s meaning appears clear and unambiguous, ... the party asserting a different meaning has a correspondingly heavy burden of demonstrating contrary legislative intent.”); State v. Alex, 646 P.2d at 208 n. 4 (under Alaska's sliding-scale approach to statutory interpretation, the more plain the language of the statute the more convincing the evidence of contrary legislative intent must be).