Court Opinion

ID: 9642316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:54:34.343351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:45.816046
License: Public Domain

GUNN, Judge,
dissenting.
I firmly believe that the definition of “total state revenues” absolutely includes the 1980-81 balance of approximately $500 million.
The majority opinion vividly indites the venerable precepts that “[wjords used in constitutional provisions must be used in context; their use is presumed intended, and not meaningless surplusage.... The words used in constitutional provisions are interpreted so as to give effect to their plain, ordinary and natural meaning.” Citing Roberts v. McNary, 636 S.W.2d 332, 335 (Mo. banc 1982) and Boone County Court v. State, 631 S.W.2d 321, 324 (Mo. banc 1982).
And so it is that the only definition of “total state revenues,” as it applies to the *617Hancock Amendment, appears in Art. X, § 17(1) to include “all general and special revenues ... as defined in the budget message of the governor for fiscal year 1980-81.” (Emphasis added) The Constitution expressly states how the term is to be defined and could not be more explicit. It states in words that are unambiguous and that require no construction that revenue means what the governor said it meant in his budget message for fiscal year 1981.
Nowhere else in the Hancock Amendment does “total state revenues” pertain except as to Art. X, § 18(a) and (b). The effect of the majority is to ascribe a meaningless concept and purpose to the definition in Art. X, § 17(1).
The governor’s budget message for fiscal year 1980-81 defined revenues to include as a component of total state revenues the opening balance of approximately $500 million that the majority opinion omits. Therefore, applying those fine principles of law recited at the outset, I am compelled to find that the trial court did not err in declaring the opening balance as a component portion of the general revenue to be included in “total state revenues” for the purposes of Art. X, § 18(a). And in this regard, I dissent from the majority opinion.
I agree that the equal protection question has not ripened for adjudication.