Court Opinion

ID: 9532565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:22:34.607938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:47.121658
License: Public Domain

LANGDON, J., Dissenting.
I dissent. There is no legal foundation for petitioner’s claim, and the opinion inaugurates a practice which is dangerous in the extreme. As pointed out in said opinion, the established principle, expressly stated in our Constitution, requires a legislative appropriation as a basis for the payment of money from the public treasury. The obvious method of appropriating money for a particular purpose is the specific designation of a certain sum for that purpose.' There was no such designation here. There might also be an appropriation, under the decisions, if section 656 of the Political Code had fixed a salary for petitioner. In such case, construing this section with section 1029 of the same code, the salary fixed by law would be payable out of the general fund. (See Harrison v. Horton, 5 Cal. App. 415 [90 Pac. 716]; Humbert v. Dunn, 84 Cal. 57 [24 Pac. 111].)
But the instant case falls entirely outside the rule of these decisions. Assuming that section 656, in providing that petitioner’s salary shall be fixed by the director of finance with the approval of the governor, is a valid statute *45establishing his position, it still is not a legislative appropriation. It does not designate an amount, and therefore “lacks the first essential to an efficient appropriation”. {Ingram v. Colgan, 106 Cal. 113 [38 Pac. 315, 39 Pac. 437, 46 Am. St. Rep. 221, 28 L. R. A. 187].) Moreover, section 1029 states that the payment of salaries shall be made out of the general fund “unless otherwise provided by law”. The Budget Act certainly provides otherwise when it states that “no money hereby appropriated shall be used for salary and expenses of Chief of the Division of Service and Supply”.
It is unsound to start with the premise that petitioner has performed the duties of an important state office under a valid statute and to conclude therefrom that he is entitled to compensation. The constitutional requirement of a valid appropriation is entirely clear and is well known. Petitioner, in taking the office and performing services, was presumably aware of the fact that no valid provision for compensation existed, and that in unmistakable terms the legislature had left his compensation out of the appropriation bill. We cannot destroy one of the most fundamental of our constitutional safeguards out of a sympathetic desire to pay petitioner for services which he rendered knowing the risk of nonpayment.