Court Opinion

ID: 9775106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:43:52.031995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:20.530587
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Calvert,
joined by Justices Brewster and Griffin, dissenting.
I cannot agree with the majority opinion.
As stated by the Court of Civil Appeals, 250 S.W. 2d 242, “The controlling question squarely presented by this case is whether or not tax monies collected during the month of October, November, and December of 1951, as a result of a levy made following the hearing upon a county budget for 1952, constitute ‘current revenues’ for the year 1951.”
It becomes important to know whether such monies constitute “current revenues” for the year 1951, for if they do not then the action of the commissioners’ court of Starr. County taken on August 16, 1951, in amending the budget for 1951 and ordering increased expenditures for that year would violate Section 7 of Article XI of the State Constitution and would be void.
The pertinent part of Section 7 of Article XI of the Constitution is set out in the majority opinion and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that it prohibits any city or county from incurring a debt unless provision is made at the time for levying and collecting a tax sufficient to pay interest thereon and provide a sinking fund. This prohibition has been an integral part of our Constitution since 1869 when it was included in Section 23 of Article XII.
Although McNeal v. City of Waco, 89 Texas 83, 33 S.W. 322, decided by this court in 1895, is usually cited as the leading case for the interpretation given the foregoing constitutional provision to the effect that an obligation to be paid out of current revenue is not a debt within the meaning thereof, that interpretation seems to have been announced first in 1883 in The City of Corpus Christi v. Woessner, 58 Texas 462. It was reaffirmed in The City of Terrell v. Dessaint, 71 Texas 770, 9 S.W. 593, in which the court added: “We freely concede that debts for the ordinary running expenses of a city, payable within a year out *383of the incoming revenues of the year, and with other indebtedness not clearly in excess of the yearly income for general purposes, can be created by a city.”
The reason for the construction placed on the provision is made so clear by the court’s opinion in McNeal v. City of Waco, supra, that a part of that opinion should be quoted (89 Texas 83, 33 S.W. 323).
“These constitutional provisions were intended as restraints upon the power of municipal corporations to contract that class of pecuniary liabilities not to be satisfied out of the current revenues, or other funds within their control lawfully applicable thereto, and which would therefore, at the date of the contract, be an unprovided for liability, and properly included within the general meaning of the word ‘debt’. They have no application, however, to that class of pecuniary obligations in good faith intended to be, and lawfully, payable out of either the current revenues for the year of the contract or any other fund within the immediate control of the corporation * * *. We conclude that the word ‘debt’ as used in the constitutional provisions above quoted, means any pecuniary obligation imposed by contract, except such as were, at the date of the contract, within the lawful and reasonable contemplation of the parties, to be satisfied out of the current revenues for the year, or out of some fund then within the immediate control of the corporation.”
Thus it appears from the cases cited that before the turn of the century the term “current revenue” took on special meaning in interpreting the constitutional provision to determine whether a particular obligation was a debt.
During the entire period covered by the foregoing decisions —and ever since, for that matter — the statutes of this state provided that taxes for any given year were due and payable on October 1st of that year. See Acts 1876, p. 260; General Laws of Texas, Vol. 8, p. 1096, Vernon’s Anno. Civ. Stat. Art. 7255. That such was the effect of the statute is not left in doubt by judicial decisions. Wall v. Club Land & Cattle Co., Tex. Civ. App., 88 S.W. 534, reversed in part, Club Land & Cattle Co. v. Wall, 99 Texas 591, 91 S.W. 778, 92 S.W. 984; Echols v. Miller, Tex. Civ. App., 218 S.W. 48, no writ history; Crutcher v. Aiken, Tex. Civ. App., 252 S.W. 844, no writ history. In Club Land & Cattle Co., v. Wall, supra, 99 Texas 591, 91 S.W. 2d 779, this court said that “The indulgence by the state to the 1st of March *384did not relieve the taxpayer of the duty to pay at any time between the 1st of October and the 1st of March.”
While it is not likely that as large a percentage of taxes was paid in October, November, and December of the year for which they were levied prior to the enactment in 1939 of Article 7255b, V.A.C.S., giving a premium for early payment, as are now paid in such months, we may assume, I think, that at least some taxpayers met their tax obligations promptly. So it was with full knowledge that the law provided for the payment of taxes for the current year on and after October 1st of the same year and that payments thereof were actually made in the months of October, November, and December of the same year that the court spoke of “current revenue” as “incoming revenues of the year” and “yearly income” of the year.
Webster’s New International Dictionary defines the word “current as “belonging to the present time” and the word “revenue” as synonymous with “income”. “Income” is said to mean “to come in”.
The taxes levied in the instant case in August 1951 were taxes for the year 1951, not for the year 1952. They were levied upon property owned on and valued as of January 1, 1951 (Art. 7151, V.A.C.S.) arid were due and payable on October 1, 1951. These taxes constituted current revenue within the meaning of the constitution for some year. The majority has said for 1952. But how can it be said that taxes levied in 1951 for the calendar and fiscal year of 1951, upon property owned on and valued as of January 1, 1951, to be due and payable on October 1, 1951, and actually paid in October, November, and December 1951, are “current revenue” for 1952? How can it be said that such taxes are “incoming revenues of the year” 1952, or “yearly income” for the year 1952? How can it be said that these taxes “come in” in 1952 when in fact they “come in” in 1951?
The majority supports its holding solely by an opinion of the Attorney General which says, in effect, that to hold the money to be current revenue for the year 1952 rather than for the year 1951 is more in harmony with the provisoins of the Uniform Budget Law. Art 689a-9 to 689a-12, V. A. C. S. But the term “current revenue” has been used constantly by the courts” and has therefore had a definite meaning since 1883, and the budget law was not enacted until 1931. I find nothing in the budget *385law which expressly or by necessary implication requires a new and different meaning.
Moreover, our attention has been called to another opinion of the Attorney General, No. V-2960 dated September 18, 1952, in which it is held that taxes collected in October, November, and December in the year in which levied are current revenue for such year in counties of over 225,000 population coming under the provisions of Acts 1939, 46th Leg., p. 144, § 1, as amended Acts 1945, 49th Leg., p. 93, ch. 65, § 1 (Art. 1666, Note, V. A. C. S.). Under the provisions of the act referred to the budget of the county is originally prepared and adopted in January and it appears to be the reasoning of the Attorney General that since the adoption of the budget is not followed immediately by a tax levy, — “this new budget law does not tie the budget to any particular tax levy” “current revenue” in these counties is something wholly different from “current revenue” in counties of less than 225,000 population coming under the Uniform Budget Law. The vital instrument being construed in each instance is the Constitution and it is wholly unlikely that the Legislature by the enactment of different budget laws should have intended that the constitutional prohibition against incurring debts would mean one thing as to one group of counties and something wholly different as to another group.
I submit there is no such distinction — that current revenue for a given year in counties both large and small is the actual or reasonably anticipated income of the county for that year, that is, the money collected or to be collected by the county during the year. This was the meaning of the term for half a century before adoption of the Uniform Budget Law and it is still its meaning.
The judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals should be reversed and the judgment of the trial court affirmed.
Associate Justices Brewster and Griffin join in this opinion.
Opinion delivered May 6, 1953.
Rehearig overruled June 3, 1953.