Court Opinion

ID: 9630356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:09:10.45189+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:37.411430
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Jones:
The challenged provision of Act No. 212 of 1972 permits three private organizations — the Pennsylvania State Council of Farm Organizations, the Pennsylvania Canners and Fruit Processors Association and the Pennsylvania Association of County Fairs — to designate, i.e., appoint, eight of seventeen members of the committee charged with the task of approving and overseeing the expenditure of excess proceeds in the Pennsylvania Fair Fund for agricultural research projects. The majority contends that the statutory provision is unconstitutional as an improper delegation of legislative power. In evaluating this charge, we proceed, as the majority correctly points out, in compliance with the well-settled rule that an act of the General Assembly will not be declared unconstitutional unless it clearly, palpably and plainly violates the Constitution. Absentee Ballots Case (No. 2), 431 Pa. 178, 181-82, 245 A.2d 265, 267 (1968); Daly v. Hemphill, 411 Pa. 263, 191 A.2d 835 (1963); Rubin v. Bailey, 398 Pa. 271, 157 A.2d 882 (1960). I believe that the majority has misapplied this standard.
Article II, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1968 provides that: “The legislative power of this Commonwealth shall be vested in a General Assembly, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” The legislative power is indisputably the power to make laws. See, e.g., Baldwin Township’s Annexation, 305 Pa. 490, 158 A. 272 (1931). In control of the State’s finances, the General Assembly is supreme; appropriations may be made for whatever purposes and in whatever amounts the legislature deems desirable, subject to certain well-settled con*490stitutional limitations on its exercise of legislative power. See Commonwealth ex rel. Schnader v. Liveright, 308 Pa. 35, 161 A. 697 (1932). Two of these limitations, the prohibition of special laws and the rule against delegation of law-making power, are pertinent to the present case.
It is fundamental that the General Assembly cannot delegate its power to make laws to any other branch of government, or to any other body or authority. Chartiers Valley Joint Schools v. Allegheny County Board of School Directors, 418 Pa. 520, 211 A.2d 487 (1965); Archbishop O’Hara’s Appeal, 389 Pa. 35, 131 A.2d 587 (1957); Belovsky v. Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia, 357 Pa. 329, 54 A.2d 277 (1947); Holgate Brothers Co. v. Bashore, 331 Pa. 255, 200 A. 672 (1938). In State Board of Chiropractic Examiners v. Life Fellowship of Pennsylvania, 441 Pa. 293, 297, 272 A.2d 478, 481 (1971), we recently delineated the bounds of legislative power in light of the non-delegation principle: “While not specifically set forth in the Constitution, the non-delegation rule is a natural corollary to Article II, §1 since it requires that the basic policy choices involved in ‘legislative power’ actually be made by the Legislature as constitutionally mandated. It is generally agreed that the non-delegation principle does not require that all details of administration be precisely or separately enumerated in the statute. ‘While the legislature cannot delegate power to make a law, it may, where necessary, confer authority and discretion in connection with the execution of the law; it may establish primary standards and impose upon others the duty to carry out the declared legislative policy in accordance with the general provisions of the act.’ . . . However, legislation must contain adequate standards which will guide and restrain the exercise of the delegated administrative functions.” Chartiers Valley Joint Schools v. Allegheny County Board *491of School Directors, 418 Pa. at 529, 211 A.2d at 492-93. The question which initially must be answered is whether Section 16(e) of the Pennsylvania Harness Racing Act of 1972 contains standards adequate to guide and restrain the exercise of the delegated administrative function.
The legislative purpose underlying enactment of the contested provisions of the Act is clearly to benefit agriculture throughout the Commonwealth and the public interest therein through public funding of agricultural research projects. While the standard of action in the public interest is not explicitly set forth in the statute, the directive to fund only those projects most beneficial to the public interest is so implicit in the tenor of the statutory provisions of Section 16(e) that it would strain this Court’s interpretative powers to construe otherwise. The legislative designation “agricultural research projects” is a sufficiently adequate standard to guide and restrain the exercise of this particular committee’s delegated administrative function — implementation of the legislative policy determination that a fixed amount of excess proceeds from harness racing should support agricultural research— in approving and overseeing the expenditure of public funds. The General Assembly has not, in my estimation, delegated legislative power to the Committee. Indeed, in imposing upon the seventeen individuals the duty to carry out the declared legislative policy, the General Assembly has chosen administrators broadly representative of agricultural interests within the Commonwealth whose expertise could well be expected.1
*492Having determined that the power to implement the declared legislative policy could constitutionally be delegated to an administrative body, we turn to consider whether the appellees, the designees of the Pennsylvania Council of Farm Organizations, as participatory members of the Committee, may constitutionally be charged with the exercise of that power.
This Court has never declared that in making a law to delegate the power to determine the existence of a state of facts or circumstances upon which operation of the law will commence, the General Assembly may not constitutionally allow Informed private citizens to participate in the fact-finding process. In its promulgation of the amended provisions of the Harness Racing Act, the General Assembly has declared as a matter of legislative policy that public funds are to be expended to benefit agriculture throughout the Commonwealth. We should not hold that it would be illogical or unreasonable to have represented on the committee charged with implementation of that policy the Pennsylvania Council of Farm Organizations, which itself represents over 63,000 Pennsylvania farmers and forty-three individual farm organizations, and, although not parties to this suit, the Pennsylvania Canners and Fruit Processors Association and the Pennsylvania Association of County Fairs. The compre*493hensive size, knowledge and agricultural awareness of the three named organizations bespeak their particular suitability to reflect the interests of the agricultural community as a whole and substantiates the legislative logic underlying the designation of their representatives as members of the committee. Where an administrative function has been properly delegated, a classification vesting in private persons or groups the power to participate in administrative actions need not be and is not here constitutionally defective as special legislation.2
The declared legislative policy of Act No. 212 is to promote agriculture throughout the Commonwealth. It is difficult to perceive how the public funding of agricultural research projects, whether or not chosen by a committee of whose seventeen members eight represent private agricultural groups, will not inure in the short and long run to the benefit of all Pennsylvanians. These organizations represent the views of a very high percentage of Pennsylvania farmers and agricultural processors upon whose progress the state of agriculture in this Commonwealth depends.
The majority’s refrain calling for elected, responsive representation in government tends to unduly romanticize the issue. Certainly no framer of a democratic *494society ever propagated the idea that all public servants must be elected. Only the highest of our policy-making officials are to be elected. The Pennsylvania Constitution pragmatically provided for the thousands of situations in which public officials must be appointed.
Indeed, in a society of ever-growing complexity and perplexity, our elected officials must have at their disposal a generous admixture of experts to advise them on governmental problems. The majority’s decision today closes one avenue by which the specialists may advise our elected leaders.
A relevant consideration is that nine members of this seventeen-member committee are from the “politically responsive” category. The appellees do not constitute a “controlling number” of a Commonwealth committee, as the majority would have us believe. The minority status of appellees as members of the committee charged with implementation of declared legislative policy does not invalidate the otherwise constitutional statutory provision. I agree with the decision of the Commonwealth Court that the inherent presumption of constitutionality has not been overcome.
Mr. Justice O’Brien and Mr. Justice Pomeroy join in this dissenting opinion.

 The interpretation that Section 16(e) of the Act involves not a delegation of legislative power but only creation of an administrative duty necessarily disposes of appellants’ contention that the General Assembly has usurped the Governor’s power of appointment. Article IV, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution pro*492vides in part: “(a) The Governor shall appoint an Attorney General, a Superintendent of Public Instruction and such other officers as he shall be authorized by law to appoint.” Article VI, Section 1, declares in similarly constrictive language that : “All officers, whose selection is not provided for in this Constitution, shall be elected or provided for as directed by law.” As the Commonwealth Court has correctly indicated in its review of this controversy, the Governor’s power of appointment is in all respects narrowly defined by the Constitution and by the Legislature. Hetherington v. HcHale, 10 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 501, 514, 311 A.2d 162, 169 (1973).

 The majority’s reliance on our decision in Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. v. White Cross Stores, Inc., 414 Pa. 95, 199 A.2d 266 (1964), is misfounded. In that ease, we considered only the non-delegability to private persons of the price regulatory power of the General Assembly. State Board of Chiropractic Examiners v. Life Fellowship of Pennsylvania, 441 Pa. 293, 272 A.2d 478 (1971), is also inapposite to our considerations. Therein, we invalidated a statute which required chiropractors to attend a two-day conference of a private chiropractic society as a precondition for renewal of their annual registration and license. There was, we concluded, no sound reason or real necessity for such special classification.