Court Opinion

ID: 9596842
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:53:24.4837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:54.144505
License: Public Domain

Justice Wi-iichard
dissenting.
The majority acknowledges, but relegates to insignificance, the central and controlling facts that when the defendant-board voted to make the payment in question, the recipient had been a county employee for nine years, was still a county employee, and was scheduled to remain one for a brief period. Given these undisputed facts, the conclusion that the payment was not in consideration of public service is untenable. The defendant-board unquestionably has the authority to set the compensation of its officers. N.C.G.S. § 153A-92 (1991). That is what it has done. The payment constitutes a mere adjustment in the recipient-employee’s salary — nothing more, nothing *124less. The fact that it was voted near the end of his service to the county is devoid of legal or constitutional significance.
The fact that the recipient had been paid all he was due under prior board action likewise lacks legal or constitutional significance. As the Court of Appeals opinion states, “the primary inquiry under Article I, [Section] 32 is not whether,the recipient has a legal or enforceable claim against the government entity granting the benefit, but rather, whether the governmental entity took such action in consideration of the recipient’s public service.” Leete v. County of Warren, 114 N.C. App. 755, 759, 443 S.E.2d 98, 101 (1994). The defendant-board was statutorily empowered to adjust the recipient’s salary for the brief period of his service that remained, and that is what it has done. Its choice of terminology (“severance pay”), while perhaps politically unwise and unfortunate, does not render the payment any less in fact “in consideration of public service.”
Brown v. Comrs. of Richmond County, 223 N.C. 744, 28 S.E.2d 104 (1943), on which the majority relies in part, is neither on point nor similar. There the recipient of public funds was paid the salary he would have received had the office he once held not been abolished. It is clear beyond peradventure that the recipient there performed no public service as consideration for the sum received, in that the office in which he would have performed such service was nonexistent during the period for which the sum was appropriated. By contrast, when the defendant-board voted to pay the sum at issue here, the recipient had been fulfilling the duties of his public position for nine years, was still fulfilling them, and was to continue to fulfill them for a brief period in the future. The payment thus constituted a mere adjustment, statutorily authorized and constitutionally permissible, in the salary formerly set for the recipient’s service to the county.
If the defendant-board had made an appropriation to someone hired for the congressional position who at the time was not an employee of the county, such a payment would have constituted a special emolument not in consideration of public service. That is not the case, however. As a county employee, the recipient was entitled to request, and the board was empowered to grant, an adjustment in the salary paid him for his services. The conclusion that the increase in salary gives the recipient compensation without consideration is unsupported by the record and divorced from reality.
Any perceived folly in the payment is not properly this Court’s concern. As the majority acknowledges, the presumption is that pub-*125lie officials discharge their duties in good faith and in accord with the spirit and purpose of the law. Painter v. Board of Education, 288 N.C. 165, 178, 217 S.E.2d 650, 658 (1975); Huntley v. Potter, 255 N.C. 619, 628, 122 S.E.2d 681, 686-87 (1961). The record here contains evidence that supports this presumption, in that the chair and one member of the defendant-board expressed gratitude to the recipient “for the quality of service he had rendered to Warren County during his nine-year tenure.” There is no evidence that contravenes the presumption. The payment thus is both constitutional and legal, and its wisdom or the lack thereof is properly for the voters of Warren County to determine in the electoral process. In addition to lacking constitutional or legal merit, the majority’s decision constitutes an intervention, unwarranted and unwise, in matters properly left to the discretion of duly elected county officials and ultimately to the voters at whose sufferance they serve.
Judge John C. Martin’s opinion for the Court of Appeals is well reasoned, well written, and correct. I would affirm it in all respects, and I therefore dissent.
Justices FRYE and WEBB join in this dissenting opinion.