Court Opinion

ID: 9659673
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:52:12.210019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:10.690276
License: Public Domain

Black, J.

(concurring specially).

Exposed by searching questions from the Bench, the blandly deceptive employment by defendants of the equally deceptive building authority act of 1948 (MCLA 123.951 et seq.; MSA 5.301[1] et seq., as last amended by 1970 PA 47), along with its referenced auxiliary, The Revenue Bond Act of 1933 (MCLA 141.101 et seq.; MSA 5.2731 et seq. as last amended by PA 1969, No’s 79 and 87), has stirred the Court to unanimous prompt affirmance of the injunctive judgment entered below. Our affirming judgment, reciting "opinion or opinions to follow”, was entered June 16 last, 8 days after submission of that which became an appeal by force of the Court’s order of May 24, assuming appellate jurisdiction.
The action being thus finally decided, and the defendants since having clamored in the press for "reasons” supporting the decision entered, I have decided to respond immediately with the ensuing separate presentation of an additional ground for affirmance which, in my view, by itself dictates nullification of the "revenue” bonds the defendant Stadium Authority has issued pursuant to its ordi*365nances No’s 1 and 2.1 Such presentation will enter our record accompanied by certain unilateral gratuities proposing urgently an abrupt termination of these sly multi-million dollar impositions upon property taxpayers; impositions such as we find neatly arranged here pursuant to that reprehensible underplot known as § 6 of the finance and taxation article (Const 1963, art 9).
The injunction we have affirmed will of course arrest permanently any and all levies of property taxes which the confederate defendants have undertaken to authorize. But that injunction will not check or inhibit further tricky legislation veneered by the phrase "within the meaning of § 6 of article 9 of the constitution.” Nothing short of immediate legislative submission to the people, of another adjusted-to-date "15-mill amendment”, will restrain the perpetration of more such amercements of property taxpayers, many of whom realize they are being steadily fleeced by the *366shadowy advancement and manipulation of resolutions, contracts, leases, "evidences of indebtedness”, ordinances, charters, statutes, progressively cute amendments of statutes and huge "revenue bond” issues, all keyed behind the scenes to property taxation "without limitation as to rate or amount”. Yet, as discovery of bilk usually comes too late and the rights of bona fide purchasers intervene, these taxpayers have no remedy or recourse.
I concede that such uninvited offerings do not of prim dignity belong in a judicial opinion, and admit that such as appear presently will have intruded by license appropriated. Aside from all this, note is made that my endorsement of the yet unprepared opinion of the Court will in all probability be added thereto.
Butcher v Grosse Ile Twp, 387 Mich 42 (1972) fully disrobed § 6 along with all related deceit of the "Preface” and "Address”, which last Butcher considered at 58-60. But we did not then realize the extent to which that section had already been employed to exploit such deceit. Now we are faced by another kind of property tax fraud born of § 6; fraud attempted by legislation in palpable if not fraudulent violation of a mandatory, plainly applicable, and long since familiar provision of the legislative article. This time however, there is a remedy; one which Judge Moody in circuit provided promptly and rightfully. And this time, over and above determination of the formally presented legal questions with respect to which all here agree, I experience no difficulty in applying — sua sponte to this equitable action — the mentioned constitutional provision. It reads (Const 1963, art 4):
"Sec. 24. No law shall embrace more than one object, which shall be expressed in its title. * * * ”
*367The quoted provision appeared first in the Constitution of 1850 (art 4, § 20) and again in the Constitution of 1908 (art 5, § 21). When as here the inquiry concerns taxes, it has always been interrelated in meaning and purpose with another section of the legislative article, reading presently (art 4, § 32), "Every law which imposes, continues, or revives a tax shall distinctly state the tax.” That was noted explicitly by Justice Campbell, writing for the Court in Westinghausen v People, 44 Mich 265-267 (1880):
"This section,2 which does not seem to have been discussed at all in the Constitutional Convention, was evidently borrowed from an amendment to the Constitution of 1835, proposed in 1842, and ratified in 1843, which provided in substance that every law creating a State debt should specify the object for which the money was to be appropriated, and be confined to a single object, and all money raised under it should be applied to the specific object stated in the law, and to no other purpose. Sess. Laws 1842, p 157; Sess. Laws 1843, p 231. Its intent is manifest, to prevent the Legislature from being deceived in regard to any measure for levying taxes, and from furnishing money that might by some indirection be used for objects not approved by the Legislature.”
The named defendants tell us, dependably as shown by the record:
"Wayne County Stadium Authority ('the Authority’) was incorporated by action of the Board of Commissioners of the County of Wayne ('the County’) pursuant to the Building Authority Act, Act 31, Public Acts of Michigan, 1948 (Extra Session) (5.301(1) to 5.301(15) *368MSA) ('Act 31’). Under Act 31 the County and the Authority entered into a lease agreement ('the Lease’), by the terms of which the Authority agreed to acquire a domed multi-purpose stadium to be located immediately to the west of Cobo Hall in the City of Detroit and a related parking structure and the sites therefor ('the Stadium’) and to lease the Stadium to the County, and by the further terms of which the County agreed to lease the Stadium from the Authority and to pay a rental therefor to the Authority on a semi-annual basis beginning in 1975, the estimated completion date of the Stadium, in amounts sufficient to pay principal of and interest on the Bonds. Although the obligation of the County to pay the rental to the Authority under the Lease is absolute and unconditional, it is intended that the payments of rentals in the amounts of the principal and interest upon the Bonds will be paid as they become due from funds other than general funds of the County, including receipts from: i) use of the Stadium; ii) an excise tax on charges made for accommodations by hotels and motels in the County, authorized by Act No 232, Public Acts of Michigan, 1971, to a maximum rate of five per cent; and iii) State of Michigan revenues derived from thoroughbred and harnéss racing in the amount of $2,500,000 annually authorized by Act No 5, Public Acts of Michigan, 1972, to be appropriated to the County. Any excess derived from these sources will be used to establish a rent guarantee fund to be used only for future rental payments required to be paid by the County if current receipts are insufficient therefor. Only if funds available from all these sources including the rent guarantée fund are insufficient to pay said rental as it becomes due, and then only to the extent of any such insufficiency, will the County be required to expend therefor its general funds including such funds as may be raised by ad valorem taxes for this purpose. (Emphasis by present writer.)
"The Authority and the County entered into an operating agreement ('the Operating Agreement’), which is terminable at the option of the County, under which the Authority agreed to operate and maintain the Stadium as agent for the County.
*369"The Authority, pursuant to Act 31 and in accordance with Act 94, Public Acts of Michigan, 1933, as amended (5.273 et seq. MSA) ('Act 94’), by ordinance authorized the issuance of Stadium Authority Stadium Bonds in the principal amount of $126,000,000 ('the Bonds’) in anticipation of and pledging for their payment the rental payments to be paid by the County to the Authority under the Lease. The proceeds of the Bonds are to be used to pay the cost of acquiring and constructing the Stadium and other costs incidental thereto and to the financing of the Stadium.”
However, and except by the delightfully oblique sentence italicized above, the defendants do not mention or acknowledge that the bonds thus issued by the Stadium Authority are in actual fact a combination of revenue bonds and general obligation bonds. That necessary conclusion reached, § 24 rears up automatically for test of title and body of the building authority act as that act stood —with its amendments of 1970 — when ordinance No 2 was ordained March 2 last.
In the building authority act we must find — if there at all — constitutional as well as interpretive power of the Stadium Authority to issue and sell these dually secured bonds, distinguishable as they always have been from "self-liquidating revenue bonds”; for the bonds before us if valid are general obligation bonds, dually secured in that they are designed for retirement (a) by variously committed, or "returned”, or "granted”, or promised "net revenues primarily pledged”, and (b), by a specific pledge of the faith and credit of the defendant County with that pledge backed by obligatory countywide property taxation — "without limitation as to rate or amount” — whenever such revenues turn up short. There is in the building authority act no such power. For that additional reason I have voted to affirm.

*370
First: The Building Authority Act, Tested by §24 for Authorization of Other than Revenue Bondage.

Arrayed below is the 1970-amended (by No 47) title of the building authority act:
"An act to provide for the incorporation of authorities to acquire, furnish, equip, own, improve, enlarge, operate and maintain buildings, automobile parking lots or structures, recreational facilities, stadiums, and the necessary site or sites therefor, together with appurtenant properties and facilities necessary or convenient for the effective use thereof, for the use or benefit of any county or for the use or benefit of any county and any city or village therein, or for the use or benefit of any city, village or township or for the use of any school district and any city, village or township wholly or partially within the district’s boundaries, or for the use of any intermediate school district and any constituent school district or any city, village or township, wholly or partially within the intermediate school district’s boundaries; to provide for compensation of authority commissioners; to permit transfers of property to authorities; to authorize the execution of contracts, leases and subleases pertaining to authority property and the use thereof; to provide for the issuance of revenue bonds by such authorities; to validate action taken and bonds issued; and to provide other powers, rights and duties of authorities and incorporating units, including those for the disposal of authority property.” (Emphasis by present writer.)
Prior to review of § 24’s buttressing authorities the reader of this title will note that there is no intimation therein, any more than there has been in the title of the act since enactment thereof in 1948, of any power to pledge "full faith and credit”, or of power to levy property taxes for the purpose of retiring or securing payment of "revenue bonds” issued and sold thereunder. As always *371before, the amended title gives notice only of intent to provide "for the issuance of revenue bonds by such authority [authorities].” It, the title, is in that respect restrictive and preclusive, within presently quoted Callaghan v Chipman, 59 Mich 610 (1886).
In recent Maki v East Tawas, 385 Mich 151 (1971), affirming 18 Mich App 109, both Courts redeclared and reapplied the rules set forth in MacLean v State Board of Control for Vocational Education, 294 Mich 45 (1940), particularly including regularly cited Blades v Board of Water Commissioners of Detroit, 122 Mich 366 (1899). Blades is factually and instantly analogous. The title of the statute considered there did not give or intimate that constitutionally required "fair notice” of the imposition, by lengthy § 9 of that statute (pp 373-375), of property taxes "to be assessed, levied, and collected the same as other city taxes.” The conclusion reached by the Court was summed up by this pointed question (p 378):
"Would the title to this bill, as introduced in the legislature, when read by a taxpayer of Detroit, be notice to him that the system of supporting the waterworks was to be changed from that of water-rates to that of taxation?”
The same interrogatory is due here. Would the 1970-amended title quoted above, when read by a taxpayer of Wayne County, be notice to him that the well understood system of retiring revenue bonds was to be changed (if indeed it was thereby changed) to one of revenues derived from the resolved project supported whenever needed by property taxation, levied at large "without limitation as to rate or amount”?
For many years now Vernor v Secretary of *372State, 179 Mich 157 (1914) has been regarded as a leading Michigan authority counsel should consult for guidance in testing the sufficiency of the title of legislation brought to scrutiny. The opinion gathers and reviews with care all of the authorities handed down to its time, and presents these answers to what will ever be a recurrent constitutional question (pp 160-161):
"What is the constitutional test? We think it is that a title must embrace the object of the act, and the body of the act must not be inconsistent with the title. The pertinent questions should be: Does the title of the act fairly indicate the purpose of the legislation? Is the title a fair index of the act? Does the title of the act fairly inform the legislators and the public of its purposes, as a whole?”
"In Brooks v Hydorn, 76 Mich 273, 278 (42 NW 1122) [1889], Justice Morse, speaking for this court, said:
" 'This purpose of the constitutional direction, which has been disregarded in this act, is that the intent of the bill — its object — shall be clearly shown by its title for the benefit, not only of the members of the legislature who are to vote upon it, but also for the benefit of the State outside of the legislature, who are interested, and have a right to be, in all legislation, whether the same be general or special.’ ”
Judged by these rules the title of the building authority act has always restricted the issuance of bonds, by any and every authority appointed thereunder, to what are legally identifiable and commonly known as revenue bonds. So did the title of the Revenue Bond Act from the time of its enactment in 1933 to the time of its express amendment, in 1969 (by No 87), to provide "for a pledge by public corporations of their full faith and credit for the payment of the bonds”. But here 1970-amended § 11 of the building authority act still restricts, as it has since 1948, the financing *373power of the appointed authority to that of issuance of "self-liquidating revenue bonds”, such bonds only, as theretofore and presently authorized by the Revenue Bond Act.
No one could possibly know this better than do the nationally eminent bond counsel for these defendants, the respective offices of whom overlook the financial canyon of Detroit’s Griswold Street where all great bond issues of our public corporations must pass in review. They surely must recall vividly, more so than the writer, the emergent events of early 1933 that gave rise to the need for exclusive financing of public, projects by issuing and selling "self-liquidating revenue bonds, payable solely from the revenues derived from the operation of such project” (from the title of 1933 PA 94, pp 117-118). The people had just initiated and adopted the "15 mill amendment” (Const 1908, art 10, § 21) and there was no other way to finance such projects. Besides, any legislator or local officer who in those days so much as hinted at more property taxation was doomed politically.
In sum, the act of 1933 has nailed down in public as well as professional understanding the purpose and meaning of "self-liquidating revenue bonds”. That exclusively precise expression defines what kind of bonds an appointed authority may issue under § 11 as it reads today. Now let us examine the critical portion of that section (PA 1970 at 135):
"Sec. 11. For the purpose of acquiring, improving and enlarging any such building or buildings, automobile parking lots or structures, recreational facilities, stadiums, and the necessary site or sites therefor, together with appurtenant properties and facilities necessary or convenient for the effective use thereof, and furnishing and equipping the same, the authority may issue self-liquidating revenue bonds in accordance with and sub*374ject to the provisions of Act No. 94 of the Public Acts of 1933, as amended, being sections 141.101 to 141.139 of the Compiled Laws of 1948, except that the bonds may be either serial bonds or term bonds or any combination thereof, as shall be determined by the authority. Such bonds shall be payable solely from the revenues of such property, which revenues shall be deemed to include payments made under any lease or other contract for the use of such property. Where and to the extent that the bonds are payable from revenues derived from payments to be made pursuant to any lease or other contract obligations, the bonds shall be deemed to be issued in anticipation of contract obligations and such obligations shall be deemed to be contract obligations in anticipation of which bonds are issued, within the meaning of section 6 of article 9 of the constitution. No such bonds shall be issued unless the property whose revenues are pledged has been leased by the authority for a period extending beyond the last maturity of the bonds. For the purpose of section 33 of Act No 94 of the Public Acts of 1933, the limits of the authority shall be deemed to coincide with the limits of the incorporating unit, or in the case of a joint authority organized under section 2, with the limits of the county, or in the case of a joint authority organized under section 2a, with the combined limits of the incorporating units.” (Emphasis supplied.)
If anything in this welter of words is construable as empowering an appointed authority to issue bonds other than "self-liquidating revenue bonds”, such as bonds secured in whole or in part by property taxation, that construction must fall before the title of the Act as it stands; § 24 being supremely controlling.
Decisive as they are, the foregoing considerations do not touch or apply another and less delicate purpose of § 24; that of preventing fraud in the legislative process. Compare the 1969 amendments of the title and body of the Revenue Bond Act (by No 87) with the 1967 (by No 200), *3751968 (by No 96) and 1970 (by No 47) amendments of the title and body of the building authority act. Then examine all in array with the statutorily required publication of notice of intent to issue the bonds that are now in question. The specific representation of that notice was declared intent "to issue and sell Revenue Bonds of the Authority, pursuant to Act 94, Public Acts of Michigan, 1933, as amended, and Act 31, Public Acts of Michigan, 1948 (First Extra Session), as amended, * * * .”3
In this statutory and documentary record of visibly representational employment of "revenue bonds” and "self-liquidating revenue bonds”, there is persuasive evidence of the kind of fraud § 24 was designed to prevent. No one here should shrink from saying so.
Take the Revenue Bond Act. By 1969 PA 87, the title and body of that act were amended radically, so as to authorize for the first time in the 36 year life of the statute a financing choice, available to the "public corporation”, between
(a) the issuance and sale of self-liquidating revenue bonds as before or,
(b) the issuance and sale of bonds supported in part by "net revenues primarily pledged to such payment”, and in part by property taxation pursuant to new § 7(2) of the act.
It is the fact and the framing of these 1970 amendments of the building authority act that should concern us now, for it is persuasively if not conclusively inferable that the promoters, the drafters, the introducers and the lobbyers thereof knew all about — if indeed they were not the pushers thereof — the year-before pledge and tax amendments of the Revenue Bond Act. Hence, if it *376was desired that bonds issued and sold by the Stadium Authority have the same taxational support as in § 7(2) of the Revenue Bond Act provided, why — in 1970 — was the title of the building authority act left pertinently intact, thus continuing the since-1948 representation to legislators and public that all bonds issued by "such authorities” would be "revenue bonds”? I can only conclude that, with the title of the building authority act proposed for amendment as was the title of the Revenue Bond Act the year before, the risk of § 24 arrest of the 1970 bill, by alerted legislators, must have been deemed greater than the more doubtful and more distant risk of a judgment of invalidity under § 24, and that the deft draft of these 1970 amendments was designed to conceal a purpose that circuitously worded § 11 would authorize the issuance by "such authorities” of "revenue bonds” supported by taxation, at large and as needed over a long period of years; all "without limitation as to rate or amount” within the "meaning of section 6 of article 9 of the constitution.”
Such is constitutionally banned fraud; the kind oft cited Callaghan v Chipman, supra, has warned against for 86 years (pp 614-616):
" 'The principal questions in each case will therefore be whether the act is broader than the title; and, if so, then whether the other objects in the act are so intimately connected with the one indicated by the title that the portion of the act relating to them cannot be rejected, and leave a complete and sensible enactment which is capable of being executed.’ Chiles v Monroe, 4 Metc (Ky) 72 [1862]; Cooley, Const Lim 148, 149; Weaver v Lapsley, 43 Ala 224 [1869]; People v Briggs, 50 NY 566 [1872], On the other hand, 'as the Legislature may make the title to an act as restrictive as they please, it is obvious that they may sometimes so frame *377it as to preclude many matters being included in the act which might, with entire propriety, have been embraced in one enactment with the matters indicated by the title, but which must now be excluded because the title has been made unnecessarily restrictive. The courts cannot enlarge the scope of the title. They are vested with no dispensing power. The constitution has made the title the index to the legislative intent as to what shall have operation. It is no answer to say that the title might have been made more comprehensive, if in fact the Legislature have not seen fit to make it so.’ Cooley, Const Lim 148, 149; Ryerson v Utley, 16 Mich 269 [1868]; People v O’Brien, 38 NY 193 [1868].
"The object and purpose of the constitutional provision now under consideration is stated by Mr. Justice Cooley, in the case of People v Mahaney, 13 Mich 481 [1865], as follows: After referring to a practice which had prevailed of bringing together into one bill subjects diverse in their nature, and saying that it was corruptive both to the legislature and the State, he adds:
" 'It was scarcely more so, however, than another practice, also intended to be remedied by the constitutional provision, by which, through dexterous management, claims were inserted in bills of which the titles gave no intimation, and their passage secured through legislative bodies whose members were not generally aware of their intention and effect. * * * The framers of the constitution meant to put an end to legislation of the vicious character referred to, which was little less than a fraud upon the public, and to require that in every case the proposed measure should stand upon its own merits, and that the legislature should be fairly notified of its design when required to pass upon it.’
"The same views have been taken of the object and purposes of the provision in other states. [Citing authorities including People v Com’rs of Highways, 53 Barb 70 (1869).]
"In the case of 53 Barb, the title of the act was 'An act to regulate a road in the town of Palatine, Montgomery county.’ The object of the act was to authorize and direct the commissioners of highways of a specified town to reduce a road, then of the width of four rods, to the width of three rods. In that case Judge Potter says: *378'Legislative abuses, in disregard of private property, have become the standing reproach of the day. Important encroachments upon public and individual rights, and with bold impunity of consequence, are smuggled through the legislature by acts bearing most deceitful or mysterious titles, and so ingeniously devised as to ward off all suspicion or inquiry, or entirely to mislead parties interested as to the object of the act, if, perchance, they should ever read its title. Such considerations as these in relation to this existing evil, so frequently brought to the knowledge of the courts, imperiously call upon us, when the occasion presents itself, to look with a jealous scrutiny, that the constitution, in subordination to which all statutes are subject, shall not be encroached upon, nor its provisions contravened by legislative action.’ And the court made short work of the act then being considered. He said: 'The body of the bill expresses its object; the title disguises and conceals it. It is a fraud upon the public; it is a fraud upon the constitution. The words to regulate, employed in the title, are deceptive. The subject is not honestly or fairly expressed in the title, but carefully avoided. The act was conceived in fraud, and its title designed in fraud.’ ” (All emphasis by Court.)

Second: An Urgent Remedy for the Deceptive Inclusion in the Finance and Taxation Article of that which is presently headed "limits on ad valorem taxes”.

I take it that few readers of the Butcher case and of our instant opinions will deny a critical need for protection statewide against unrestrained property taxation, especially all such as may be levied "without limitation as to rate or amount”. Nor would any such reader be apt to deny a complementary need for restoration of that constitutional provision which for many years carefully limited "taxes assessed against property for all purposes” excepting only as voted otherwise by the electors affected, such as obtained from and after *379initiation and adoption of the "15-mill amendment” in 1932. Let me recall the pivotal words of that amendment, leaving out the two presently impertinent provisos thereof:
"Section. 21. The total amount of taxes assessed against property for all purposes in any one year shall not exceed one and one-half per cent, of the assessed valuation of said property, except taxes levied for the payment of interest and principal on obligations heretofore incurred, which sums shall be separately assessed in all cases: * * * ,”4
The need mentioned was not fully realized until the Butcher case was submitted and resubmitted in 1971 and decided March 9 last. Now an unchecked flood of bond issues, secured in whole or in part by more, and more property taxation, flows steadily through an incredibly careless Municipal Finance Commission and on to a great multitude of foreclosable property tax liens. The situation is urgent, and calls for legislative submission this year of another amendment corresponding with that of 1932, adjusted only to the "50 percent” proportion of true cash value which new § 3 of article 9 imposes. To that the legislative draftsmen might well add a footnote memo to the Supreme Court, by which the people could inform the Justices that the words "total amount of taxes assessed against property for all purposes in any one year” means exactly what it says and that the restrictive scope thereof takes in all kinds of sin taxes, use and abuse taxes, privilege taxes, personal taxes, special assessments, general assessments, duties, imports and excises, whenever same are imposed upon and levied against property and *380become a lien thereon which, if not paid, may be foreclosed with resultant loss of the delinquent taxpayer’s property.
Within the past few days a further reason for submission of such á protectively clear amendment has surfaced. With the so-called MEA amendment now initiated and due to go before the people this year, and with the inclusion in that proposed amendment of the same "without limitation as to rate or amount” language which in Butcher we considered, the electors are apt rightfully to be both wary and chary of what is being widely represented as "property tax relief’ or "property tax reform”. In short, the people having been deceived before by § 6 and its submission are less likely to approve an amendment that tastes again of property taxation "without limitation as to rate or amount”, at least until they have been precedently assured, as by the 1932 amendment, that they are to have overall elective control over all property taxation. That assurance will have to be provided, if I read aright the understandable suspicions of property taxpayers, before they as electors will approve an amendment containing much the same language as appears now in the second paragraph of § 6 of the finance and taxation article.
By way of conclusion it may not be amiss to add a wholesome word about politics. The Legislature today, like this Supreme Court, could stand a bit more of that great desiderate which spells trust and respect of the people who sent us to legislative and judicial duty. So far as the Legislature is concerned I can think of nothing that might so quickly tend to bring for its membership great cheers, from all over the state, than the submitted opportunity of restoration of local elective control over property taxation.
*381SUPPLEMENT (August 30, 1972).
A copy of the Court’s opinion, as it stands (ante 233), was delivered to me August 2. That opinion, manifestly the product of assiduous and painstaking endeavor to prevent more like errors of elected and appointed municipal officers, is replete with value of great significance in and for the area of municipal finance and the relation of applied constitutional and statutory provisions to that area. The opinion does, however, include certain commitments which in my respectfully submitted judgment are not requisite to decision and, also, are susceptible to brand of dicta.
Of prudence learned over the years, I am not prepared to endorse the Court’s opinion in its entirety. I therefore record that which appears below in the same cautionary mood one finds in Justice Cardozo’s introduction of Lecture I, delivered in 1921.5
I concur with and endorse the outline and statement of facts appearing in the Court’s opinion (ante 236-244); also with Divisions I, II, III (ante 238-253), and with X and "B.” of XI (ante 330-356). .1 agree tentatively but not fully with the remainder of the opinion and, of course, concur with the judgment of the Court, affirming the circuit court’s judgment.

 The entitlement of both ordinances is the same. The first was adopted September 27, 1971. The second, amendatory of the first, was adopted March 2, 1972. That entitlement, published in full cap, is sufficiently introductive:
"AN ORDINANCE TO PROVIDE FOR THE ACQUIRING AND CONSTRUCTING BY THE WAYNE COUNTY STADIUM AUTHORITY OF A STADIUM FOR LEASE TO THE COUNTY OF WAYNE; TO PROVIDE FOR THE ISSUANCE AND SALE OF BONDS TO DEFRAY THE COST THEREOF; TO PROVIDE FOR THE RETIREMENT AND SECURITY OF SAID BONDS; AND TO PROVIDE FOR OTHER MATTERS RELATIVE TO SAID PROJECT AND SAID BONDS.”
Ordinance No 2 as published includes, deep in the fine printed body thereof, this specific provision for imposition of property taxes:
"By the terms of the Lease the County of Wayne has agreed to pay annually as the Fixed Rental for the said Stadium such amount as is necessary to pay the principal of and interest on these Bonds and additional Bonds of equal standing and the obligation to pay said annual rental is a general obligation of the said County of Wayne which is authorized and obligated by law to levy an ad valorem tax on all taxable property within the said county, without limitation as to rate or amount, to provide the funds necessary to pay said annual rental in anticipation of which these Bonds are issued.”

 "Every law which imposes, continues, or revives a tax, shall distinctly state the tax, and the object to which it is to be applied; and it shall not be sufficient to refer to any other law to fix such tax or object.” (Const 1850, art 14, § 14.)

 The Court’s forthcoming opinion will touch this publication with detail.

 The full quotation appears in the first opinion where the amendment was brought to review; Pontiac School District v City of Pontiac, 262 Mich 338 (1933).

 "I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery, and reread with due contrition. The persuasion that one’s own infallibility is a myth leads by easy stages and with somewhat greater satisfaction to a refusal to ascribe infallibility to others. But dicta are not always ticketed as such, and one does not recognize them always at a glance.” (Quoted from the Selected Writings of Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, p 116; Fallon Law Book Co., New York, 1947).