Court Opinion

ID: 9568446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:03:51.931131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:43:12.478426
License: Public Domain

Gordon, J.,
dissenting.
For many years this Court has adhered to the rule that “[t]he powers of the Boards of Supervisors are fixed by statute and are only such as are conferred expressly or by necessary implication”. Board of Supervisors v. Corbett, 206 Va. 167, 174, 142 S.E.2d 504, 509 (1965), and cases cited therein; American-LaFrance v. Arlington County, 164 Va. 1, 178 S.E. 783 (1935). Today, in my opinion, the Court has failed for the first time to follow that rule.
Admittedly, the Fairfax County Airport Authority Act did not give the Fairfax Board express power to lend money to the Fairfax *836County Airport Authority. Unable to find express authority, the majority concludes that the grant of power to create an authority necessarily implies the power to lend money to the authority. I believe this reasoning is unsound as a general proposition, and peculiarly unsound in this case for two reasons.
First, the General Assembly, when providing for the creation of other authorities, has seen fit to empower counties to lend money to the authorities they create. For example, the Virginia Water and Sewer Authorities Act expressly empowers a creating body to make loans: “Each authority created hereunder ... is hereby authorized and empowered: * * * To borrow . . . [and] to issue its notes, bonds or other obligations . . . Any county, city, or town which has formed or joined an authority may lend money to such authority A [Emphasis supplied] Va. Code Ann. § 15.1-1250 (hi) (Repl. vol. 1964).
In the comparable section of the Act authorizing the creation of the Fairfax County Airport Authority, the General Assembly withheld any authority for Fairfax County to make loans: “The Authority [the Airport Authority] is hereby authorized and empowered: * # * [T]o borrow money and to issue bonds, refunding bonds, notes, certificates or other evidence of indebtedness of the Authority.” Va. Acts of Assembly 1964, ch. 642, at 967, 970.
The majority apparently assumes the General Assembly inadvertently failed to give Fairfax County authority to make loans when it enacted the Fairfax County Airport Authority Act. I believe we should assume the General Assembly acted consciously, not inadvertently, in the absence of compelling reason to conclude it intended to say what it did not say.
The majority concedes that the enactment of Code § 15.1-511.1 in 1966, which gives general authority to counties to lend money to authorities created by them, cannot validate the loan made by Fair-fax County to the Authority in 1964, because Code § 15.1-511.1 is not a “curative statute”. Va. Acts of Assembly 1966, ch. 132, at 231; Va. Code Ann. § 15.1-511.1 (Supp. 1966). After making that concession, the majority says the enactment of § 15.1-511.1 “is at least some evidence that our conclusion that the Board had the power to make the loan is not contrary to the legislative intent”. “Evidence” that the General Assembly did not have a contrary intent in 1964 cannot lend support, however, to a holding that the General Assembly conferred a power in 1964 by necessary implication.
Secondly, the majority holds that the Fairfax County Airport *837Authority Act necessarily implied the County’s power to lend to the Authority, without any showing that the power was necessary. This implication can be deemed necessary only upon a showing that the Authority could not have functioned without borrowing from the County, and the General Assembly knew the Authority could not have functioned without borowing from the County. The majority can point to no such showing. The majority can say only: “[Ijf the Authority could not look to the [Fairfax] Board for an advance of funds to get the project started, the Board would probably have created an ineffective agency, which obviously could not have been the intent of the legislature.” [Emphasis supplied] By these words, the majority does not say that the County’s power to lend must necessarily be implied to carry out the intent of the Act; the majority suggests only that the power might be implied.
Furthermore, the majority has no basis for assuming that the Authority could “look” only to the County “for an advance of funds to get the project started”. We know from the record in a pending case that another authority obtained temporary financing from a bank to defray the same type of expenses as were defrayed by Fair-fax County’s loan to the Airport Authority. Industrial Development Authority of the City of Chesapeake v. Harold F. Suthers, Chairman, etc., Record No. 6589. The bank lent money to the Chesapeake Authority to defray (among other things) “the cost and expenses of site preparation . . . [and] architectural and engineering fees”. The purpose of Fairfax County’s loan to the Airport Authority was “to compensate the engineers in accordance with their previous agreement for the accomplishment of preparation of site drawings and specifications ...”
I would therefore reverse the decree sustaining the demurrer and dismissing the plaintiffs’ amended bill of complaint.
Snead, J., concurs in this dissent.