Court Opinion

ID: 9676055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:13:28.09467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:43.170029
License: Public Domain

HARRIS, Justice
(dissenting in part).
Much as I admire the scholarship and careful analysis reflected in the majority opinion, I cannot join in it and dissent in part. The majority is entirely correct in rejecting plaintiffs’ challenges under Iowa Code chapter 335. I agree that ordinance 24 must be disapproved, but respectfully dissent from the majority holding that ordinances 22, 23, and 25 conflict with statutory law. I think they were authorized under the home rule amendment.
Whether statewide regulation is a good or bad idea is, as the majority recognizes, a political issue for resolution by the General Assembly. So long as it does so constitutionally1 it is entirely up to the legislature to determine whether local government, state government, or both, or neither, should superintend the regulation of hog lots. Our question is not what the legislature should do, but rather to determine what it has done.
All applicable statutes stand in plain view of the home rule rights granted to counties by article III, section 39A of the Iowa Constitution. The majority is on solid ground in stating that the grant of home rule is not unlimited. But the fact that local governments must yield to state law should not obscure the vast change wrought by the home rule amendment which was intended to revolutionalize the relationship between state and local governments. Claims such as the present one should be tested in the light of the home rule philosophy that found its way into our constitution: where practicable, local problems should be addressed by local government. To pursue that goal we should strive to uphold, rather than to thwart, efforts of counties to govern local affairs. In interpreting the twin (city) home rule amendment, we described our approach this way:
A city has the power to enact an ordinance on a matter which is also the subject of statute if the ordinance and statute can be harmonized and reconciled. A municipal ordinance is “inconsistent” with a law of the General Assembly and, therefore, preempted by it, when the ordinance prohibits an act permitted by a statute, or permits an act prohibited by a statute. In considering a claim that a city ordinance violates “home rule” powers, we interpret the state law in such a manner as to render it harmonious with the ordinance. *510If the statute and ordinance cannot be reconciled, the statute prevails.
Sioux City Police Officers’ Ass’n v. Sioux City, 495 N.W.2d 687, 694 (Iowa 1993) (citations omitted) (emphasis added). The same approach governs challenges under county home rule. Polk County Bd. of Supers. v. Polk Commw. Charter Comm’n, 522 N.W.2d 783, 791 (Iowa 1994). The implications of this important case extend far beyond the immediate issue of the regulation of livestock confinement facilities. I have a sinking feeling that the concept of home rule for local governments, guaranteed in our constitution, ■will suffer under the majority holding.
I. With regard to ground water control, I agree that ordinance 24 cannot withstand plaintiffs’ challenge, although I would rest the holding on a finding of express preemption. Iowa Code section 455B.172(5) reserves to the state — through the department of natural resources — exclusive jurisdiction to set standards regarding ground water as it relates to disposal of waste from livestock confinement structures. I agree with the majority that the general authorization to local governments granted under Iowa Code section 455E.10(2) must yield to the specific authorization in section 455B.172(5). This provision is also important for what it reveals beyond the preemption it provides. It also demonstrates that the legislature knows well how to express itself when it intends to claim exclusive statewide jurisdiction over a subject matter.
II. I disagree with the majority’s holding that ordinances 22, 23, and 25 conflict with state law and would affirm the trial court’s ruling upholding them. Iowa Code section 331.301(1) is a general grant of authority for counties to exercise powers and protect and preserve the property of its residents. This is a statutory grant in addition to the constitutional home rule provision previously mentioned. Local ordinances of course must be reconcilable and not inconsistent with the legislative intent and scheme of state law. Local ordinances however may “set standards and requirements which are higher and more stringent than those imposed by state law.” Iowa Code § 331.301(6). The majority goes to great length in an attempt to accommodate the grant of local governmental power to set more stringent standards with the requirement of consistency. In the end the majority concludes the ordinances are inconsistent, rather than merely imposing a higher standard. I disagree. The ordinances at issue set forth standards for various livestock confinement operations. Many of these standards and requirements are more stringent than those imposed by state law. But this factor does not render them invalid. See Sioux City Police Officers’ Ass'n, 495 N.W.2d at 695; Bryan v. City of Des Moines, 261 N.W.2d 685, 687 (Iowa 1978).
There is another strong indication the legislature did not intend to bar the ordinances challenged here. Iowa Code section 455B.144 provides for local control of air pollution:
1. Any political subdivision may conduct an air pollution control program within the boundaries of its jurisdiction.... In conducting such programs, political subdivisions may adopt and enforce rules or standards to secure and maintain adequate air quality within the respective jurisdictions.
2. If the board of supervisors in any county establishes an air pollution control program and has obtained a certificate of acceptance, the agency implementing the program may regulate air pollution within the county including any incorporated areas therein until such incorporated areas obtain a certificate of acceptance as a joint or separate agency.
What the majority has done, after rejecting the preemption challenge, is to then embrace a rewired version of it in the guise of inconsistency. Surely where, as here, the claim of preemption is correctly rejected, a constitutional right granted to local government should not fail on so frail a ground that the local provision is unfriendly to a state plan. It should require a sterner confrontation than this. At least one state has gone so far in interpreting a similar home rule provision as to require a showing that the two provisions “cannot coexist.” E.B. Elliott Adv. Co. v. Metropolitan Dade County, 425 F.2d 1141, 1150 (5th Cir.1970). We need not *511accept so strong an interpretation in order to affirm here, of course, because there is ample room for accommodation between the Iowa Code and the challenged ordinances.
Except as to ordinance 24,1 think the trial court was correct in rejecting the challenges, and as to ordinances 22, 23, and 25,1 would affirm.

. No constitutional challenge is implicated in the present appeal.