Court Opinion

ID: 9687932
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:53:58.506228+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:33.234369
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Justice.
I respectfully dissent.
I concur in Divisions I and II.
I. It would be much easier and personally more satisfactory to simply concur in the *463carefully documented opinion. The need for a cooperative solid waste agency for the metropolitan district of Des Moines is apparent and acute. All of us are keenly aware of such needs. But this need cannot allow the governmental units to assume unconstitutional authority in solving immediate problems. The dilemma thrust upon us by practical considerations is not new. Robert H. Bowmar, The Anachronism Called Debt Limitation, 52 Iowa L. Rev. 863, 890 states:
“ * * * In many cases, perhaps, the judges confronted by these devices consciously disregarded a clear constitutional mandate, because the affected governmental unit’s needs were made known to the bench too clearly. Such needs would go unfulfilled without judicial approval of the particular plan, or one with like intent. Some have claimed that present-day confusion and multiplicity of devices could have been, and still can be avoided by a strict constitutional interpretation which would void the arrangements, and thus rightly thrust upon the voters the obligation to alter their constitutions or go without their improvements. Perhaps, but amending constitutions is not a political task of which to speak lightly. Within the framework of devices we now have, generalization seems impossible. But notwithstanding a posited community need for certain improvements, with the possible exception of well-regulated self-liquida ting devices, it is submitted that, in the fact of debt limiting provisions, the means utilised to satisfy such need are not justifiable. They are not consistent with the avowed purpose of the restrictions as originally enacted. Each of the considered devices is a barely-disguised technique for debt-ceiling avoidance and provides a vehicle for the possibly irresponsible imposition of excessive tax burdens upon a unit’s property owners. We might simply leave this phase of the discussion with this understatement: ‘A rapidly growing volume of court cases offers a bewildering array of judicial rulings on the concepts and issues involved in these various approaches to the avoidance of debt restrictions.’ ” (Emphasis supplied).
II. The first area of disagreement found is the purpose and effect of the statutes being construed. The device used here is described by Bowmar’s article, supra, at 52 Iowa L.Rev. 863, 884: “The device which is of major importance today, due to the apparent resurgence of its application, is the so-called public authority.” In commenting on the validity of the device Bowmar, with strong authority in support has this to say:
“ * * * More basically, among the commentators there is a consensus that no justification exists for the exemption from debt limits which the public authority device enjoys. The exemption is of no avail where the authority might be found to be merely an agency of the state, thereby subjecting the state itself to scrutiny under an applicable constitutional provision. * * *. 52 Iowa L.Rev. 888, 889.
Since chapter 28E does not concern itself with debt limitation it is constitutional on the basis that it merely authorizes the component units to do jointly what they already had the power to do individually. But it must be remembered that the authorization is not merely for creation of a solid fill waste agency. The powers conferred cover road building, (op. Atty.Gen., June 29, 1966) and all other legitimate governmental activities such as public transportation systems, sewer systems, water systems, police and fire protection, et cetera.
III. The constitutionality of chapter 236, Acts of the 63rd General Assembly, is an entirely different matter. It involves the special fund doctrine which in turn is based on existing independent revenue. Once the special fund doctrine is accepted as a constitutionally permissible device for avoiding constitutional debt limitations under certain circumstances, the question becomes one of degree. Does the specific implementing legislation go so far as to evade or ignore the debt limitations? Or *464does it present an acceptable device that can be said to fall outside the constitutional strictures and can thus legitimately be said to only avoid them ? This is the real question here.
The public agencies in this case, like the Board of Regents in Farrell v. State Board of Regents, Iowa, 179 N.W.2d 533, decided September 2,1970, seek to extend the special fund doctrine beyond constitutional limits. The doctrine allows governmental agencies to incur indebtedness based on anticipated revenue from nontax sources. In approving such action in Interstate Power Co. v. Town of McGregor (1942), 230 Iowa 42, 57, 296 N.W. 770, 777, we quoted Young v. City of Ann Arbor, 267 Mich. 241, 255, 255 N.W. 579, 584:
“ ‘Such bonds are not payable by the city. It does not assume and agree to pay them. It can levy no tax upon the people for their payment. They are exactly what they purport to be, self-liquidating revenue bonds, and the purchaser thereof can have recourse for their payment only to the revenue to be derived from the operation of the sewage disposal plant.’ ”
Interstate Power Co. v. Town of McGregor and Young v. City of Ann Arbor are different from the case at bar because neither case allows the city to collect fees from property owners in the same manner as taxes are collected. Couple such a provision with the prohibition against withdrawal of an agency from the project after the bonds are sold and the credit of the municipality’s taxpayer is in fact pledged to payment of the bonds. These provisions pledge the taxable real property of the taxing district to the payment of the bonds in a fashion that goes far beyond anything heretofore approved by this court. The credit of the city and county is on the line; otherwise it would not be necessary to hold them in the contract for the bondholder’s protection.
IV. All of this stems from failure of the legislature to supply sufficient guidelines in chapter 236. The distinction between revenue from a governmental function which must be performed even if it takes the power of taxation to supply the money and a governmental function that can be abandoned without resort to taxing power (or its equivalent) is not made. It is one thing to build an electric plant to replace a private utility, or build a parking lot, an auditorium, a stadium, or the like, any of which can be abandoned if the project doesn’t pay off. It is quite another thing to organize an independent entity to furnish services which the citizens must accept and pay for on pain of loss of property through taxation and call these payments “revenue” which goes into a special fund.
To me at least the distinction is this. Where the service is to be rendered by the taxing unit to substantially all of the people and is considered so important that its financing must be implemented by involuntary payments by the taxpayers in the form of taxation, tax liens, or equivalent (collected like taxes), the revenue derived from the furnishing of such service is government revenue which will not give rise to the special fund theory. Where the service to be performed by the taxing unit is such that it may be accepted or rejected by the people and is not so important as to necessarily invoke the tax collection powers (or equivalent), then the income derived from such service is independent revenue which may qualify for the special fund doctrine. The fact the fees may be assessed and collected as taxes takes this case far beyound the' holding in Farrell v. State Board of Regents, Iowa, 179 N.W.2d 533, decided September 2, 1970. What is said in Farrell is not authority for what the action approved here.
As I read this statute and the majority opinion, the legislation presently considered is broad enough to allow county and city units to create a fire protection agency to service all citizens within the geographical boundaries of the new unit. Fees could be allocated to the private property protected and the fees could be collected like *465taxes. The new unit could issue bonds predicated on the expectation of such fees. The whole scheme would be legal and would not count as to debt limitations imposed on the participating units. All of this can be done without the referendum process traditionally required for bond issues. This would appear to be an unacceptable evasion of the Iowa constitutional debt limitations. If this seems farfetched see City of La Habra v. Pellerin, 216 Cal.App.2d 99, 30 Cal.Rptr. 752 (4th Dist., 1963).
The breadth of chapter 236 and the mo-dus operandi urged by defendants in this case leave us in the position that all governmental functions may be funded by creation of separate units backed by fees and charges “to be collected in the same manner as taxes”. This effectively bypasses the Iowa constitutional prohibitions in the same manner as if they were not written into the constitution in the first place.
This point is made by Bowmar:
“The revenue bonds are, by definition, evidences of obligations created for self-liquidating projects. In its purest form, the special fund theory which underlies revenue bond financing clearly lies without the limits of the constitutional provisions. The governmental unit is merely acting as the conduit through which payments pass to the bondholder; there is no danger that the general taxpayer will be burdened with increased taxes to cover the expenses of improvements meant to benefit a consuming subclass of taxpayers. So long as the limitations upon its use are applied with rigor, there appears little room for questioning a technique requiring payment for use according to degree of use. A key factor would seem to be the degree of voluntariness associated with the project; are the users voluntarily assessed? If not, the situation is hardly distinguishable from that considered earlier under the special districting technique where excessive burdens are placed on certain taxpayers. * * *
“Once a court has decided that we are not talking about a debt of the governmental unit in the constitutional sense, then we are not within the letter of the provision and all of the problems generated by circumvention would follow; the court pierces the veil covering the city’s true role and recognizes the rate payers as the actual debtors. One is left with some misgivings at this point. If the ‘improvement’ is in the nature of a public utility, so that all the taxpayers are also all the ratepayers, saying that the rate-payers are the actual debtors hardly distinguishes the situation from one where it is the unit’s debt. Because the unit’s debts are, a fortiori, those of its general taxpayers, it would appear that this would constitute a misuse of an otherwise justifiable approach to handling improvement needs, leading to ‘debts’ beyond the allowable limits.” 52 Iowa L. Rev. 879, 880. (Emphasis Supplied).
This factor would seem to distinguish the instant case from all other Iowa cases. The involuntary requirements that the governmental unit remain in the scheme and the involuntary nature of imposition and collection of fees is fatal. “Fees” as used here is little more than a euphemism for “taxes”.
It seems to me the above distinctions must be recognized in this case or sometime in the near future. The task of “spelling out” such distinctions is essentially legislative. But this task has not been performed in chapter 236. Put differently there is no understandable guide line as to what source the funds may have in order to qualify as “revenue” within the “special fund” doctrine. Therefore there is an unconstitutional delegation of power in chapter 236.
V. One additional protest should be added. The plan devised under chapter 28E and chapter 236 allows all of the agencies to do collectively what they cannot do individually. That is, it allows substantial bond obligations to be created without a referendum as required by statute. Cf. Iowa Code, 1966, chapter 75, and sections *466345.1, 407.3, 407.5. This is a very long step not heretofore authorized by the Iowa legislature or approved by this court. Again, this is done without guidelines.
I would reverse.
LeGRAND, J., joins in this dissent.