Court Opinion

ID: 9546967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:38:36.56655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:05.495905
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J.
I dissent. Article XIII B of the California Constitution (hereafter article XIIIB) limits state and local governments’ ability to spend tax revenues. In general, a public entity can spend no more than it spent the year before, adjusted for changes in population and the cost of living. This limitation does not apply to all government spending, but only to spending falling within the constitutional definition of “appropriations subject to limitation.” (Art. XIII B, § 1.) The majority holds that all contributions that a public entity makes to a retirement fund for its employees are “appropriations subject to limitation” and therefore subject to the article XIIIB limit. This holding is based on a superficial analysis of the relevant constitutional provisions. A more complete analysis reveals that contributions to employee retirement funds are exempt from the article XIII B limit when the public entity makes them under an obligation that existed on January 1, 1979.
A provision of article XIII B exempts all “debt service” appropriations from the spending limit. (Art. XIII B, § 9, subd. (a).) In this context, “debt service” is defined as “appropriations required to pay the cost of interest and redemption charges, including the funding of any reserve or sinking fund required in connection therewith, on indebtedness existing or legally authorized as of January 1, 1979, or on bonded indebtedness thereafter approved according to law by a vote of the electors of the issuing entity voting in an election for that purpose.” (Id., § 8, subd. (g).)
A public entity’s mandatory contributions to an employee retirement fund constitute debt service. This court so held in Carman v. Alvord (1982) 31 Cal.3d 318, 327-328 [182 Cal.Rptr. 506, 644 P.2d 192], Although in that case we construed a provision of article XIII A of the California Constitution, rather than the “debt service” provisions of article XIII B, these two articles *590are closely related and the language of the relevant provisions is virtually identical.1 There is no sound reason to conclude that the electorate intended to give the same words different meanings in these related and complementary parts of the state Constitution. Accordingly, mandatory contributions to an employee retirement fund are exempt from the article XIII B spending limit as “debt service” if the contributions are made under an obligation existing on January 1, 1979.
The conclusion that mandatory payments to pre-1979 retirement funds are exempt as debt service is fortified by the analysis of the Legislative Analyst included in the voter pamphlet for the election at which article XIII B was enacted. In relevant part, it read: “[A] local government with an unfunded liability in its retirement system could appropriate its excess revenues to reduce the liability, as such an appropriation would be considered a payment toward a legal ‘indebtedness’ under this ballot measure.” (Ballot Pamp., Proposed Amends, to Cal. Const, with arguments to voters, Special Statewide Elec. (Nov. 6, 1979) p. 20, italics added.) Stated more simply, payments to existing employee retirement funds will be exempt from the article XIIIB spending limit as debt service. The majority concedes this is what the Legislative Analyst’s words mean, but it asserts that the Legislative Analyst was mistaken. On the contrary, the Legislative Analyst’s conclusion is the most reasonable interpretation of article XIII B’s language. Moreover, the Legislative Analyst’s words are persuasive evidence of the voters’ intent in enacting article XIII B because the voters had those words before them, as part of the voters’ pamphlet, when they were deciding how to vote, and none of the other statements in the pamphlet disputed this interpretation.
The majority relies on a provision of article Xin B that expressly refers to employee retirement contributions. It states: “Each entity of government may establish such contingency, emergency, unemployment, reserve, retirement, sinking fund, trust, or similar funds as it shall deem reasonable and proper. Contributions to any such fund, to the extent that such contributions are derived from the proceeds of taxes, shall for purposes of this Article constitute appropriations subject to limitation in the year of contribution. Neither withdrawals from any such fund, nor expenditures of . . . such withdrawals, nor transfers between or among such funds, shall for purposes of this Article constitute appropriations subject to limitation.” (Art. XIII B, § 5, italics added.)
To be sure, this provision (hereafter section 5) necessarily contemplates that some contributions to employee retirement funds are subject to the *591article XIII B spending limit. But the majority reads it more expansively. The majority concludes that under section 5 all contributions to employee retirement funds are subject to the article XIIIB spending limit, and that the debt service provisions, to the extent they provide a basis for exempting such retirement contributions from the article XIII B spending limit, must be disregarded because they fail to mention retirement fund contributions by name. This reasoning does not withstand scrutiny.
Putting aside retirement contributions, there is a need to reconcile section 5 with article XIII B’s “debt service” provisions because both refer expressly to reserve and sinking funds. Section 5 includes payments to reserve and sinking funds with retirement contributions as appropriations subject to the article XIII B spending limit, whereas the “debt service” provisions state that payments to reserve and sinking funds may qualify as debt service that is exempt from the article XIII B limit. The only way to give effect to both provisions, as required by accepted rules of statutory and constitutional construction (see, e.g., County of Los Angeles v. State of California (1987) 43 Cal.3d 46, 58 [233 Cal.Rptr. 38, 729 P.2d 202]), is to divide reserve and sinking funds into two categories, so that some of the funds are subject to limitation under section 5 while others are exempt from limitation under the “debt service” provisions. This is easily done.
Section 5 speaks prospectively (“Each entity . . . may establish such [reserve and sinking] . . . funds . . . .”) and therefore it is reasonably interpreted to apply only to reserve or sinking funds established after article XIII B appeared on the legal horizon. The “debt service” provisions, by contrast, look generally to the past. They provide an exemption for “indebtedness existing or legally authorized as of January 1, 1979.” All payments made to reserve or sinking funds in existence on that date, and which otherwise meet the constitutional definition of “debt service,” are exempt.
Thus, a fair reading of article XIII B compels the conclusion that payments to reserve and sinking funds can and must be divided between those made to funds established on or before January 1, 1979 (and therefore exempt) and those made to funds established afterward (and so not exempt). If payments to reserve and sinking funds can and must be so divided, then should not contributions to retirement funds (which are a kind of reserve fund) be divided in the same manner? The majority gives no satisfactory answer to this question.
Had section 5 been intended to establish an exception to the “debt service” exemption, as the majority concludes, it would have been logical to place *592section 5 with the “debt service” provisions, or at least to include within section 5 a reference to those provisions. Section 5’s location distinctly apart from the “debt service” provisions, and the absence of any cross-reference to those provisions, suggests that section 5 was intended to serve a different purpose. That purpose is not difficult to discern. Rather than specifying whether particular funds are or are not exempt from the article XIIIB limit, the primary purpose of section 5 is to explain how the article XIII B limit works when applied to those funds that are not exempt. The main point of section 5 is that in the case of various kinds of nonexempt reserve funds maintained by public entities, the article XIII B limit applies when the government makes payments into the fund, and not when payments are made out of the fund. This overriding purpose is in no way frustrated by a conclusion that certain fund payments (that is, those to service preexisting debt) are not subject to the article XIII B limit at all.
The majority relies on the rule of statutory and constitutional construction that a specific provision prevails over a general provision. But this rule applies only when the provisions at issue are inconsistent. (See Code Civ. Proc., § 1859 [“[W]hen a general and particular provision are inconsistent, the latter is paramount to the former.”]; International Assn. of Fire Fighters Union v. City of Pleasanton (1976) 56 Cal.App.3d 959, 976 [129 Cal.Rptr. 68].) “Two statutes dealing with the same subject are given concurrent effect if they can be harmonized, even though one is specific and the other general.” (People v. Price (1991) 1 Cal.4th 324, 385 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 106, 821 P.2d 610].) Properly read, section 5 is not inconsistent with the “debt service” provisions of article XIII B; these provisions can and should be harmonized. Under the “debt service” provisions, a public entity’s contributions to an employee retirement fund are exempt from the article XIII B limit if they are made to discharge an obligation that existed on January 1, 1979; all other contributions to employee retirement funds are subject to that limit. I would so hold.

Article XIIIA limits real property taxes, but it exempts from this limit real property taxes imposed “to pay the interest and redemption charges on . . . any indebtedness approved by the voters” before article XIII A was enacted. (Cal. Const., art. XIII A, § 1, subd. (b).)