Court Opinion

ID: 9704223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:27:12.263264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:58.744304
License: Public Domain

LOUIS J. CECI, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I agree with the result reached by the majority with respect to its equal protection analysis and holding. I disagree, however, with the majority's conclusion that the prison-siting legislation is not a local law. Instead, I would find that the inclusion of the prison-siting provision in the 1983 budget bill (1983 Wis. Act 27, sec. 953p) violated art. IV, sec. 18 of the Wisconsin Constitution. I write separately to voice my strong objection to the method employed by the legislature for the siting of the prison. The prison-siting legislation, buried deep within the budget bill, represents the very worst of the logrolling and railroading practices which have become all too commonplace in the legislature.
Article IV, sec. 18 of the constitution states:
"Title of private bills. Section 18. No private or local bill which may be passed by the legislature shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title."
The purpose of sec. 18 is to guard against the danger of private or local legislation being "smuggled through *157the legislature" through the use of misleading titles and to call the attention of lawmakers and the public to the character of the law. Milwaukee County v. Isenring, 109 Wis. 9, 23, 85 N.W. 131 (1901). Section 18 "is designed to protect the public from legislative enactment of statutes whose effect is unknown to legislators and to the people of the state and to direct the legislator's attention to the proposed law to forestall improvident legislation, fraud and surprise." Soo Line R. Co. v. Transportation Dept., 101 Wis. 2d 64, 72, 303 N.W.2d 626 (1981).
The very design of art. IV, sec. 18 is disregarded in the legislative practice whereby a provision such as the prison-siting legislation is included in a budget bill. Such a practice breeds unaccountable representation: it necessarily forces a legislator to vote only once on two separate matters. A legislator is forced to vote on a matter of statewide importance and prominence— the budget in this instance — the same way in which he or she will vote on a wholly unrelated subject — here, the siting of a prison in the Menomonee Valley. An affirmative or negative vote on the overall bill necessitates the vote extending to all subject matter within the bill. I find such a practice to be deplorable and untrue to the spirit of art. IV, sec. 18. Certainly the representatives' respective constituencies, which may well have different opinions about the logrolled issues, deserve to have their views be fully represented by separate voting on separate issues.
We do not require that the general electorate vote a straight party ticket; we should not tolerate legislative practices which dictate that only a single vote be cast on wholly separate issues. Such a practice is, at best, a modified form of logrolling, which is prohibited *158by statute.1 Such a practice destroys the accountability of our representatives and reduces the legislature to an internally acquiescent institution, unresponsive to the constituency it purports to represent.
I now turn to the test enunciated by the majority for determining whether a bill is private or local. I agree with the elements of the test, but not with the application or result of the test as applied to the facts of this case. As the court of appeals stated, the instant case contains facts which dictate the same result as was found in Soo Line. In Soo Line, this court held that the provision at issue was a private or local law. Soo Line, 101 Wis. 2d at 77, 78.
The majority correctly concludes that Soo Line stands for the proposition that a geographic- or entity-specific provision in a bill does not render the bill one of statewide interest merely because the provision relates in a tangential way to a matter of state responsibility of statewide dimension. "If the provision is geographic or entity specific," the provision "must have a direct and immediate effect on a specific statewide con*159cern or interest" before the bill will be considered to be of statewide dimension and not be bound by the requirements of art. IV, sec. 18. At pages 114-115. The majority concludes that although sec. 46.05(lo) (a), Stats., is a geographic-specific provision, the provision nevertheless has a direct and immediate effect on a matter of statewide concern. Id. at 120. I respectfully disagree.
A new metropolitan prison in the Menomonee Valley certainly would affect the overcrowded conditions of the Wisconsin correctional system, which is a matter of statewide concern, much like the applicable Soo Line provision dealing with the construction of a railroad crossing at a particular point would have marginally affected highway safety, also an area of statewide concern. Similar to Soo Line, the prison-siting legislation does not have a direct and immediate effect on the statewide interest which the provision allegedly addresses. The effect on prison overcrowding is secondary.
The direct and immediate effect of the provision may be discerned from the purpose of the siting provision. The legislature expressly found "prison overcrowding is a critical problem in this state which restricts the options available to judges, prosecutors and prison officials." 1983 Wis. Act 27, sec. 2020(32g)(a). However, if alleviation of general prison overcrowding were the primary and direct objective of the prison-siting legislation, then the legislature could have authorized the prison's siting in any geographic area of the state. That the legislature made the prison bill site-specific to the Menomonee Valley is significant. It indicates that the legislature was concerned with placing the prison in a specific locality of the state, probably based on the findings of the 1977 Fiad Report, which *160recommended that the state correctional system include facilities which would incarcerate the criminal offenders close to family and friends. But it is exactly the legislature's interest in geographic specificity for a prison site which necessitates the protections of art. IV, sec. 18 of the constitution. As the majority said, the three underlying purposes of art. IV, sec. 18 are:
"1) to encourage the legislature to devote its time to the state at large, its primary responsibility; 2) to avoid the specter of favoritism and discrimination, a potential which is inherent in laws of limited applicability; and 3) to alert the public through its elected representatives to the real nature and subject matter of legislation under consideration." At pages 107-108.
Although the general organization of the correctional system is a matter of statewide concern, it is a more difficult proposition to conclude, as the majority implicitly does, that the matter of housing Milwaukee-area prisoners close to home is a matter of statewide concern or that such a concern has statewide impact on the overall correctional system. It is even more tenuous to conclude that the direct and immediate effect of the prison-siting legislation is directed toward a matter of statewide concern. In my opinion, the direct and immediate effect of the specificity of the prison-siting legislation is to incarcerate Milwaukee-area prisoners close to their families and friends. This direct and immediate effect is not a matter of statewide concern, but only relates to one specific aspect of the overall correctional system, much like the at-grade crossing legislation of Soo Line concerned only a tangential, fractional component of the overall state interest in highway safety.
*161The majority concludes that the effect of the site-specific legislation "will be direct because the provision causes a prison to be built in the Menomonee Valley." At page 120. But the Soo Line at-grade provision would also have had a direct effect under this analysis, because the provision would have caused an at-grade crossing to be built at the specified location. The immediate effect of the new prison is not that it will provide additional prisoner space, at pages 120-121, for the prison could have been sited anywhere in the state and still have had the same effect. Rather, the specificity with which the legislature sited the new prison indicates that the immediate effect is to give meaning to the recommendation of the Fiad Report that urban prisoners be incarcerated near their urban environment.
While the prison system is generally a matter of statewide concern, the building of a prison in the Me-nomonee Valley to allow prisoners from that area to be maintained in that area is not a matter of statewide importance. That is, there is no statewide interest in assuring that Milwaukee-area prisoners are maintained in the Menomonee Valley in the city of Milwaukee. A provision such as sec. 46.05(lo)(a), Stats., gives direct and immediate effect only to the Fiad Report recommendation and one part of the prison system, not to the system as a whole. Only the secondary and tertiary effects have an impact on the entire prison system in relation to system-wide overcrowding, for example.
I also disagree with the majority's subjective comments concerning the local law issue. The majority states that "[t]he real nature and subject matter of this provision had to be known, and this, in turn, assured accountability." At page 120. But the test established by the majority is an objective test, not a subjective one. *162To conjecture as to what was actually known, either by the legislators or by the public, disserves the majority's own test and reduces the question of what is a local or private law to the unworkable inquiry of what the legislature or public knows concerning a particular bill.
I agree with the majority that many legislative provisions within the budget bill may not withstand constitutional analysis under the majority's test. At page 121. Those hypothetical questions are not before us at this time. I conclude, however, that the provision at issue here does not pass the majority's own test. I respectfully dissent from its local law analysis.

 Section 13.05, Stats., provides:
"Logrolling prohibited. Any member of the legislature who gives, offers or promises to give his vote or influence in favor of or against any measure or proposition pending or proposed to be introduced, in the legislature in consideration or upon condition that any other person elected to the same législature will give or will promise or agree to give his vote or influence in favor of or against any other measure or proposition pending or proposed to be introduced in such legislature, or who gives, offers or promises to give his vote or influence for or against any measure on condition that any other member will give his vote or influence in favor of any change in any other bill pending or proposed to be introduced in the legislature may be fined not less than $500 nor more than $1,000 or’ imprisoned not less than one year nor more than 3 years or both.1'