Court Opinion

ID: 9550565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:37:24.436276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:48.555022
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE ANGSTMAN,
(dissenting).
I do not agree with the foregoing opinion. Chapter 197 is not a bill for raising revenue within the meaning of section 32, article V, of our Constitution. As yet Chapter 197 does nothing in and of itself. All the cases relied on in the majority opinion are cases where the Legislature had passed an act which had become effective. Here all that has been done is to seek authority to exceed the constitutional limit of indebtedness by submitting the issue to the people as provided in section 2 of article XIII of our Constitution. That is the main purpose of Chapter 197.
The matter of raising revenue is but incidental and the ease *110on this point is ruled by Evers v. Hudson, 36 Mont. 135, 92 Pac. 462; State v. Driscoll, 101 Mont. 348, 54 Pac. (2d) 571; and Rosencranz v. City of Evansville, 194 Ind. 499, 143 N.E. 593.
Furthermore the adoption of the initiative and referendum provisions of our Constitution in 1906 (section 1, article V), had the effect of working an implied modification of some of the other provisions of our Constitution. That amendment added another legislative authority, viz., the people of the state.
The purpose of section 32, article V, was to have revenue measures originate in the house which is composed of the greater number of people. As was said in Northern Counties Investment Trust v. Sears, 30 Or. 388, 401, 41 Pac. 931, 935, 35 L.R.A. 188: “Bills for raising revenue are required to have their origin in the lower branch of the legislature because it is the more numerous of the two bodies, and, being oftener renewed by elections, presumptively it more closely and directly represents the people. Cooley, Const. Lim. 157.”
The Supreme Court of Idaho in Dumas v. Bryan, 35 Idaho 557, 563, 207 Pac. 720, 722, stated the purpose of this requirement to be as follows: “The purpose of incorporating it into the fundamental law is that laws for raising revenue are an exercise of one of the highest prerogatives of government, and confer upon taxing officers authority to take from the subject his property by way of taxation for the public good, a burden to which he assents only because of it being necessary in order to maintain the government, and the people have accordingly reserved the right to determine this necessity by that body of the Legislature which comes most directly from the people, the House of Representatives.”
But where, as here, the proposed bill is referred directly to the people themselves for their approval or rejection at the polls, every purpose of such a provision as that found in section 32, article V, is met and it is wholly immaterial where the proposed bill originated. If approved by the people it becomes their own bill as effectively as if it originated as an initiative measure. *111If rejected by them then it will have no vitality at all and what the Legislature has done will be of no further concern to anyone.
It is my view that section 32 of article Y of our Constitution was intended to apply to such bills only where the entire legislative process is based upon action of the two houses of the Legislative Assembly, i. e., the bill originating and terminating in the Legislative Assembly, and has no application to referendum measures such as that involved here.
It would serve no useful purpose for me to consider whether Chapter 197, Laws of 1957, is valid or invalid in other respects.