Court Opinion

ID: 9859450
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 21:50:01.547504+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:02:41.815397
License: Public Domain

Bogdanski, J.
(dissenting). For this court to uphold the ordinance granting the instant pay raises is in direct violation of article eleventh, § 2 of our state constitution and contrary to public policy.
It is undisputed that the various defendants are either elected or politically appointed officials of the city of Bridgeport. Article eleventh, § 2 of the constitution of the state of Connecticut provides in clear and unequivocal language that “[n] either the general assembly nor any county, city, borough, town or school district shall have power to . . . increase the compensation of any public officer or employee, to take effect during the continuance in office of any person whose salary might be increased thereby . . . .” (Emphasis added.)1
*154That the above constitutional provision was first adopted in 1877; Conn. Const., amend XXIY; and has remained intact to the present time is significant.2 This constitutional provision expresses a clear intention on the part of the people of this state to prohibit any municipal body from voting increases in compensation for elected or appointed officials to take effect during the current term of office of such officials. In Wright v. Hartford, 50 Conn. 546, 547, this court observed: “The [constitutional] provision regards an increase during the term of service and a gift at its close as equally destructive of the public good and aims to prevent both .... As it regards an increase and a gift with equal abhorrence, so it abhors them equally whether made in behalf of the servant highest in dignity or of the lowest.” (Emphasis added.)
It should be emphasized, however, that article eleventh, § 2 does not prohibit any or all increases in the compensation of public officials and employees but only such increases as are intended to take effect during the current term of office of the officials receiving such increases. To my mind, the requirement of a delay in the effectiveness of a pay increase was clearly intended by the drafters of this constitutional provision to ensure that increases in salary enacted at the taxpayer’s expense would be for the benefit of the office and not for the immediate benefit of the particular individual then holding that office. In this way the drafters sought to ensure that all such salary increases would be made in a properly disinterested manner.
*155When the individual defendants campaigned and succeeded to their elective and appointive positions, they knew full well what the compensation was for the offices which they were seeking. At no time prior to their election or appointment did they indicate to the taxpayers and voters that they would seek increased compensation immediately upon being elected or appointed. They should therefore not now be permitted either to argue that their salaries are not comparable with other municipal salaries or to vote themselves pay increases3 intended to take effect during the current term of office in violation of article eleventh, § 2. Garvie v. Hartford, 54 Conn. 440, 7 A. 723.
I must therefore dissent.

 “Continuance in office” has been held to mean current term of office under one appointment or election. Smith v. Waterbury, 54 Conn. 174, 7 A. 17.

 The delegates to the 1965 constitutional convention explicitly retained and incorporated this same provision in the constitution adopted by the convention.

 It is conceded that a pay increase such as those at issue here would have been valid if they were limited to an effective date beginning upon the next succeeding term of' office or appointment.