Court Opinion

ID: 9642318
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:54:34.351293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:45.818812
License: Public Domain

DONNELLY, Judge,
concurring.
I have heretofore concurred fully in the majority opinion of Higgins, J., in the decision of this case. I do not recede in any way from such concurrence. However, I feel compelled to address certain misapprehensions created by certain of my brothers in dissent and, for such reason, file this opinion in this cause.
In a dissenting opinion filed in this cause, it was observed that the majority, by defining “revenue” in Article X, § 17(1) so as to exclude the opening balance, “warps the meaning of the entire section.” (Emphasis mine).
*619The record on appeal in Roberts v. McNary, 636 S.W.2d 332 (Mo. banc 1982), contains a copy of a document dated October 1,1980, and entitled “Drafters’ Notes— Tax Limitation Amendment.” It sought to “provide an explanation of the drafters’ intent in the formulation of * * * [the Hancock Amendment].”
At page 3 of said document, the drafters addressed what is now Mo. Const, art. X, § 17, and said:
It was the drafters’ intent for the definition of “total state revenues” to be all-inclusive, including revenue from licenses and permits and any and all other sources, except those revenue sources explicitly excluded by language in the Amendment itself and surpluses from previous fiscal years. (Emphasis mine).
Of course, “the interpretation of this constitutional amendment is not a question of how it was understood by its framers but how it was understood by the people adopting it.” Boone County Court v. State, 631 S.W.2d 321, 324 (Mo. banc 1982). However, to indict the majority (four judges who believe that the people intended Section 17 to mean what the drafters intended Section 17 to mean) with warping Section 17 hardly serves to promote “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Rule 2, Canon 2.
That observations made in dissenting opinions can yield unfortunate consequences was evidenced in State ex rel. Sayad v. Zych, 642 S.W.2d 907 (Mo. banc 1982). In Sayad, it was said in dissent: “Under today’s holding * * * the Board of Aldermen for the first time will assert its influence over the St. Louis Police Board and tear away the protective abatis that was established over 120 years ago to prevent the Aldermen’s intrusion upon the Police Board’s authority over budgetary affairs.” As an apparent result, an editorial appeared on January 28,1983, in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, which stated in part: “Certain House members from St. Louis, possibly feeling their oats because the state Supreme Court has given City Hall control over the police budget, are jockeying to give local politicians total authority over the police department.” (St. Louis Globe-Democrat January 28, 1983, at 10A, col. 1.) (Emphasis mine). Of course, both statements are grossly inaccurate. The law of the case appears in the principal opinion. The principal opinion reaffirmed that the Police Board is a state agency and so recognized it is subject to Hancock proscriptions. Nowhere in the principal opinion (which was carefully written so as to address and decide only the issue joined) is there recognition of authority in the St. Louis Board of Aldermen to affect or control the budget of the Police Board. To speculate beyond the Court’s holding is to disserve the public interest.