Court Opinion

ID: 9569763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:17:09.25766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:03:56.710102
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent (July 29, 1975). There are some minor differences of opinion among us as to the precise wording of the decision which is and will be the law of this case. However, four of the members of this Court are in harmony with the main opinion, which is to the effect that the trial court is affirmed in its judgment holding the so-called “tax increment” statute (Chapter 4, Laws of Utah 1974), which I think should be called the “Tax Rebate Statute” titled in the statutes as the “Neighborhood Development Act,” effective and constitutional.
In my opinion, this case represents one that is not an adversary proceeding, has no character as to justiciable controversy, is unilateral in objectivity, represents an apparent obeisance to self-interest pressure groups, is devoid of any outcry by the so-called protestants, — a case where both sides seem to furnish not only the silage that created some straw men, all of whom were fired upon, burned and killed, by the double-barreled musket of extinction, the triggers of which were pulled, one by the one side and one by the other.
Besides all this, I consider this case to be a $15,000,000 rip-off of taxpayers’ money that ordinarily and constitutionally would have gone into the general fund owned by the citizens of Salt Lake City,— denied to them by a somewhat rediculous two-hatted special commission that statutorily plays musical chairs on an eccentric carousel, providing a vehicle for an insurance policy against liability, — the premium for which is paid by a small filing fee, a large attorneys’ fee, and a taxpayer’s migraine headache.
I am well aware that after legislative approval, lobbyist participation, municipal Commission approbation, this dissent may be anathema to some interests and pressures that may have “engineered” this admittedly novel legislation,1 that seems to have had the planning, timing and strategy, wonted to be characteristic of The Great Train Robbery.
Someone, however, must advance at least a few observations in empathy for the beleaguered Salt Lake City taxpayer, who has a legitimate, economic, and perhaps, also self-interest in this quixotic drama.
Neither Tribe nor Christiansen, so-called plaintiffs, showed any such empathy for the group that each professed to represent. Neither testified. Tribe is said to be a property owner in the so-called “blighted” *508area,2 and Christiansen is an owner out of the “blighted” area which the record fails to reflect really is or was “blighted” save for a small segment. Their role as litigants suggests a false universality of representation in this litigation. Neither is mentioned again in this action, in the pleadings, or testimonially, and neither represents me nor thousands of other Salt Lake City taxpayers, and there is not a smidgeon of evidence presented by either of these obvious “convenience” litigants, probative of their protestations that:
By issuing and selling the Redevelopment Agency Bonds the good name, reputation, financial standing and credit rating of the City will be injured and damaged causing the City to pay increased costs on all of its future obligations. The plaintiffs and the taxpayers will be required to pay increased taxes or suffer a decrease in municipal services because tax monies will be diverted and paid to the Redevelopment Agency instead of into the general fund of the City. For these and for the other reasons stated in the preceding paragraphs the plaintiffs will suffer immediate and irreparable injury and damage for which plaintiffs have no plain, speedy or adequate remedy at law.
It so happens that, in my opinion, these mythical litigants were dead right in the foregoing statement, hut dead wrong in their sincerity in pressing it or in any wholehearted way trying to prove it.
Having disagreed with my confreres in this case, the payers of the tax tithes are entitled to know some of the facts and legal principles that should have been brought out, but which I think deliberately were Watergated and not emphasized here with respect to the legislation. I think that if the people really had been aware of the legislation okayed by this court and had had an opportunity to vote on it, they would have defeated it by the same thumping majority of two to one when in August 1974,- a project then included and now being sponsored by a number of interests is being pressed for funding under this very legislation which evades the right of suffrage.
Way back in July of 1969, Chapter 5, Laws of Utah 1969, was passed, at a Special Session,3 — that started this litigation, —disarmingly called the “Neighborhood Development Program.” Everyone likes to develop the Neighborhood which means homes, nice streets, a church and, if possible, maybe a playground or a hopscotch area, rather than the instant money-inspired non-Neighborhood, but commercial program for high rise hotels, banks, shoe stores, parking meters and parking lots, convenient for Sheraton, Continental Bank, Valley Bank, Zions Bank, Walker Bank, the Kearns Building, et al. One may call 20 acres of commerciality a Neighborhood if he chooses, when it is the choice of lobbyists who wrote the law, the special interests promoting the legislation, the legislators who fell for such fancy, phoney phraseology, city commissioners who committed the same sin and some courts, including, in my opinion, this one. The whole thing, however, is but a snare and a delusion. The legislature should have amended the Title to “The Commercial Encouragement Taxpayer Funded Complex.” The word “Neighborhood” is the “blight” in this case, — not its virtue or description.
*509In Chapter 5, some unorthodox features are emphasized, — which are as American as apple pie filled with cherries.
Tightly wedged in a melange of trivia, it says that the city commissioners would act as such for municipal purposes, then swivel their chairs around and become real estate brokers, using taxpayers’ money to buy and sell property.
Furthermore, in Section 9 of Chapter 5, Laws of Utah 1969, specifically it is said that “A project area must be restricted to buildings, improvements or lands that are detrimental or inimical to the public health, safety or welfare. Both plaintiffs and defendants quite quietly ignored this simple, understandable interdiction. The subjoined sketch,4 which was introduced by Tribe and Christiansen, no less, — the protesters and plaintiffs, professed Injured taxpayers, is obviously objectionable on a probative value basis and intended according to the testimony, to show some kind of “blight,” —and,—no one objected to it. It clearly seems to illustrate, however, that at best and in truth, any “blight” in this 20-acre area amounts at best and very questionably to not more than 20 or 25% of the area, and that hence this project is not responsive to the statutory interdiction that it must be restricted to the blight area, — and not to an extended and additional 75 or 80% of unblighted, but commercial “going concern” property which obviously is going to be almost exclusively benefited.
Without contradiction, Mr. Wall, the Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency, indulged in a little sworn testimony double-talk, when, at one juncture he said all parking would be available to the general public and later on, with equal conviction said that Continental Bank, the Main Street parking facility, Valley Bank and Sheraton Hotel each had been assured of so many parking places. Presumably, the same assurance would be given to others who bought land from the Agency for commercial purposes.
The first step in this momentous legislation was passed at a special session that commenced on May 5, 1969. It was passed on the very day the session adjourned sine die, without, as I recall, any such exposure and editorial approval as has been evidenced here, after the decision of this court approving it was announced.
In 1970, the legislature in Chapter 5, in a Budget Session, no less, — which generally hides everything with figures, added another cog in the continuing legislative machinery that seemed to be innocuous, but was not. It was enamored by the Title: “Funds for Development Agencies,”- — an apparent high commendable bit of legislation, which proved to be but a supplement to the previous legislation, quietly giving the Redevelopment Agency the power to borrow money for development of a kid-less, homeless, teeter-totterless, churchless, lawnless, macadamized parking lot, not “neighborhood” at all, for no other purpose than to accommodate not kids, etc., but an assortment of banks, the Sheraton Hotel and other private enterprise, like stores selling pants for big men and X-rated movies for little men. The taxpayers were ignored in this Budget Session, when the legislature convened on January 12, 1970, passed the act on January 31, 1970, and adjourned on January 31, 1970, — same day (or night), while all good taxpayers were abed. The act Titled “Funds for Development Agencies” consisted of one paragraph suggesting a most wholesome thought, since everyone likes “development,” — but its title belied its purpose. An almost overlooked, neglected, hardly publicized joker in it said “Each Community by en*510actment of the legislative body may designate the legislative body (the City Commission) as the redevelopment agency of such community” to transact everything!!!

*511The next step in this legislative marathon, in order to justify what has happened in this case, was another act authorizing bonding for parking, etc., but without authority to use taxes. This act for bonding would require consent of the citizens. This of itself would be innocent and legitimate. It also was passed in the rush of the very day the legislature adjourned.
The next act, and the payoff, of course, just had to be one to tag and allocate taxpayers’ money for development of the “Neighborhood” commercial promotion, without taxpayer consent, slighting by silence, that precious right of suffrage I assumed we had, but now have relinquished in this unfortunate decision.
The act was Chapter 4, Laws of Utah 1974, — (another Budget Session), — where fiscal matters are the prime targets, — not highly controversial constitutional matters slipped in from the basement. This act was passed in a session convened on January 14, 1974, adjourning February 2, 1974, on which this legislation was railroaded through again on the same day the legislature adjourned, in the tradition of The Great Train Robbery.
So much for the legislation. Now about the testimony and transcript of the record challenging the validity of the legislature. The complaint here was filed in August 1974, which set up all the objections that a good municipal bond firm of attorneys could muster to set up straw men to be gunned down not only by their creators, but by the creators’ adversaries, as was the case here.
In my opinion both the protesters and their declaratory judgment foes were of one mind, and there appeared to be not even a David in the crowd to take on the Goliath.
The following chronology is baffling: Tribe and Christiansen either lent or sold their names to someone or anybody, as litigants, since they are conspicuous by absence. They were named in the complaint’s caption, and on its first page were taxpayers claiming to represent all taxpayers from almost everywhere. They promptly performed the greatest disappearing act since Houdini lost his sawed-in-half woman. They were replaced by two witnesses, one of whom was a Mr. Wall, —an import from an Urban Renewal Agency of Fargo, North Dakota, — and guess who: The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency. Presumably, at least, partially he must have been friendly to the so-called tax increment bit and the parking meters complex, which was responsible for his salary. Nonetheless, he was called, not as a hostile witness but as a witness for the plaintiff dissidents. The second witness, this time for the defendants, was none other than a Salt Lake City Commissioner who had voted to create the Redevelopment Agency, and himself as one of its committee, and Chairman thereof. His testimony was unrestrained praise for the program. Thus, the only two witnesses called to testify in this whole case were 1) the Executive Director and 2) the Chairman of the Redevelopment area, — none others. In my experience, this is one of the rare cases in Utah’s judicial history where not only the law virtually was ignored, but where the adversaries each cálled but one witness, which in combination in complete harmony and agreement had everything nice to say about the new law, — nothing derogatory, — and where neither one was subjected to cross-examination, and where counsel for both sides never once in 72 pages of testimony objected to any testimony of each other’s witness. That is why this case palpably should have been thrown out of court for lack of legitimate justiciable confrontation or that it did not represent an adversary proceeding but was fraught with lack of taxpayer representation, and highlighted by rubber spears in this flaccid combat. We have condemned such cases before, as is reflected in the language of Backman v. Salt Lake County, 13 Utah 2d 412, 375 P.2d 756 (1962), and its citations having to do with the Declaratory Judgment Act, as not *512being a vehicle for adversary opinions, nor one to furnish insurance policies against or resolve doubts created in the minds of those creating them:
We believe also that there was no such justiciable controversy for reasons stated in Lyon v. Bateman, particularly that portion of the case requiring that “the interests of the parties must be adverse.” The plaintiff pleaded that he and other taxpayers would suffer by needless expenditure of tax money if an election were held, which proved to be constitutionally abortive. At the hearing before this court, counsel for plaintiff commendably and candidly conceded that this action was instituted out of justifiable concern and at the request of a firm of eastern attorneys. Just as candidly, the plaintiff conceded that upholding the constitutionality of the act by this court was hoped for and desired.
We cannot see how there could be a true adversary proceeding under such circumstances. That is not to say that in a proper proceeding other than the type here, at which evidence might be adduced and findings made, the matter would be incontestible, — but simply that the Declaratory Judgments Act is not designed for giving advisory opinions in a non-adversary action, or to insure against feared risks. We reaffirm the language of Lyon v. Bateman, where we said:
“While the statutes authorizing courts to render declaratory relief should be liberally construed in order to provide prompt settlements of controversies and to stabilize uncertain legal relations, courts, nevertheless, must operate within the constitutional and statutory powers and duties imposed upon them. They are not supposed to be a forum for hearing academic contentions or rendering advisory opinions. In order to maintain an action for declaratory relief, plaintiffs must show that the justiciable and jurisdictional elements requisite in ordinary actions are present, and a judgment can be rendered only in a real controversy between adverse parties. Generally, courts have held that the conditions which must exist before a declaratory judgment action can be maintained are: (1) a justiciable controversy; (2) the interests of the parties must be adverse; (3) the party seeking such relief must have a legally protectible interest in the controversy; and (4) the issues between the parties involved must be ripe for judicial determination.”
In addition we call attention to our observations in Merkely v. State Tax Commission relating to this subject. 11 Utah 2d 336, 358 P.2d 991 (1960).
Mr. Wall, plaintiffs’, not defendants’ witness, made some rather interesting and sometimes startling statements, — not in support of the protestations of Tribe and Christiansen, but highly favorable to defendants, — without any cross-examination whatever, and without counsel for Tribe and Christiansen calling any witness or introducing any evidence to refute him. Concededly he was T and C’s willing witness against their own position. Substantially, and quite in derogation of declaratory judgment concepts, he testified as follows:
That respecting the “blight” aspect of this case, (which had to do wth an immense 20-acre, two-block area, loaded with banks, buildings and boutiques), the area consisted of six taverns, one private club of undefined virtue, two parking garages, —obsolete or “blighty” it was claimed, because the turning radius would not accommodate today’s longer cars, two gypsy phrenology shops (noted for their inherent temporary and transient occupancy), one small manufacturing company, a cafe asserted to have pigeons upstairs, a print shop, an assay office that produced some chemical odors, one cleaning shop, an adult theatre, two barber shops, a Disabled Veterans Thrift Store, an art gallery, and *513some upstair office tenants.5 (This seems to have been the “blight” in the 20-acre site).
He said the redevelopment program contemplated continued commercial use and some residential “possibilities.” 6
The standard procedure of the Redevelopment Agency, he said, was to contact owners of the “blighty” buildings, get two appraisals of the value of their property and amazingly, in his words, said: “It has been our practice to make our offer the amount of the higher appraisal.”’7 To top such generosity he testified that they then paid “relocation” costs to persons who were automatically the beneficiaries of at least the full value, — or its highest appraisal. After paying the price and relocation costs, the Agency then demolished the property, which must have been a godsend to him or a corporation to which the property was slated for sale.
The costs up to June 30, 1974, for the three prior years, including administrative, legal, planning and relocation, including $305,623 interest for borrowed money, was $1,152,563, — which if Tribe and Christian-sen knew or should have known, should have enervated them, if they were concerned taxpayers, seriously to have considered suicide or dismay. The procedure after all of the above, he said, was to dispose of the property in order to: Establish priorities, advertise, and receive proposals from developers. One priority was a convention hotel to complement the Salt Palace8 or other uses, “and the necessary parking to support the hotel and whatever else they (the Agency) would propose. So, really, the two keys were parking and the hotel; and we now have signed a contract with Skaggs Drug Corporation agreeing to sell the property to them.” Mr. Wall also said:
“The agency is proposing that the parking facility be built on the basis of a tax increment9 bond issue which would be amortised with the parking revenue after operating and maintenance, and the tax increment that would flow to the Agency on an annual basis.”
As to how the Agency proposes to operate the parking facility, he said that no decision has been made yet but the options are 1) to hire their own employees, 2) to lease it. However, the Agency has assured 120 parking spaces for Valley Bank, 175 for Main Parking Mall, 75 for Continental Bank. The testimony of the Executive Director of the Neighborhood Redevelopment Agency, who spoke words with forked tongue, (of doubtful corroboration) parroted the come-on arguments that the development project would produce vast increases in assessed valuation (and assumed but not proved, a concomitant increase in taxes going to the taxpayer, — a myth in this case). Such contention seems quite convincingly unconvinceable.
It is intimated that the parking income would pay for the development, supplemented, as might be implied, just a wee bit •by “allocated” taxpayers’ funds. The reverse is true. Tribe and Christiansen’s own Exhibit No. 14 shows that estimated *514revenues from “Parking,” over a ten-year period commencing this year would average not more than $500,000 per year. The taxpayers’ money pledged to the “Neighborhood” is $15,000,000, and the bonds creating that sum bear 7% interest, which represents, over and above the $15,000,000 debt of the taxpayers an annual $1,000,000 debt for interest alone, the outgo of which is twice as much as the input from the parking .facility. This seems to be a pediculous way to retire the bonds. The Great Train Robbery makes much better mathematical fiscal sense because there the passengers did not have to pay compound interest on the larcenous loot.
The only other witness called in this case, as stated above, was one called by the defendants, — the Chairman of the Neighborhood Rehabilitation Agency, who also was the City Commissioner, and voted for the Agency, and himself as member of the Agency. This circumstance unseemingly but correctly established some kind of precedent and departure in political philosophy by enabling a voted-in official, chosen by the electorate, to vote as such voted-in official for another voted-in official of a redevelopment agency, — namely, himself. His testimony was somewhat parallel to, but slightly more guarded, more laudatory, and much briefer, in favor of the legislation. In the shortest cross-examination I have heard about in a $15,000,000 taxpayers’ suit with a few other millions adjunct thereto dedicated to a dedicated bureaucracy, counsel for Tribe and Christian-sen, lethargic protestants here, asked: “Commissioner, there will be some benefit to the private owners of property in the area, will there not?” and he said “Yes,” and that’s about all! That exposed the whole plan.
And that’s all there is to this case, — a veritable surrender of the requirement of a justiciable controversy for the determination of adversary rights.
I think most of the original points made by plaintiffs, Tribe and Christiansen, were well taken, but they were ignored by their sponsors, simply to arrive at a desired result.
To say, as a Salt Lake City taxpayer, that the decision in this case is legally or morally sound, would be to immoralize and circumvent constitutional language, our American heritage, and freedom of pressure from affluence, and contrariwise would immortalize afearment of politics, pressures and back-door, unregistered, unseen lobbyism disguised as respectability, stemming even from the executive branch of the government and other cultural and commercial segments of the community.
This case is quite disturbing since, in my opinion, at least, it places a stamp of approval not only on a rather sneaky, disguised legislative process and a stalking attack on constitutional concepts, resulting in their destruction. It also approves a trumped-up lawsuit where the plaintiff is the hunter that kills his victim, — that already has been rendered unconscious in the hunter’s illegitimate but well-oiled well-placed trap, — all logistically maneuvered while the game wardens (representing the electorate) have been lured into a peaceful valley of temporary contendment, unawareness and inattention. Under the anesthetic of this case, the taxpayers no longer have referendum control over the decisions of municipal bodies to expend money for capital improvements in any area which arbitrarily is labeled “blighted,” whether it is blighted or not.
The area involved here was not blighted, but was prime property, obviously attractive to private risk capital, — more so than were the cases when the Hilton, Howard Johnson, Royal Inn, Arrow Press Square, Utah Hotel addition, complexes all adjacent to or in close proximity, were constructed with private risk capital free of taxpayer participation. Add to that the Salt Palace proximity, and these two so-called blighted areas obviously are better gambles for such risk capital.
The Redevelopment Agency intends to sell bonds to the tune of $15,000,000 to provide “parking.” Not only will the park*515ing revenues not even come close to repaying the bonds, but it is highly questionable whether adding the increased tax revenue can accomplish the feat, especially after deduction of the costs of increased services in the area, such as police and fire protection, maintenance, health accommodation, etc. If the whole project goes plop, the taxpayer is the ultimate surety. In the meantime the taxpayer has lost the benefit of the increased taxes which the development would pay because those taxes are going instead to pay off bonds on improvements the public did not have to finance to attract the development in the first place, and, what is more important, certainly did not have the opportunity to cast its ballot.
What about the remaining blocks the City proposes to redevelop, $15,000,000 here is just the beginning. There are at least 12 more blocks proposed for redevelopment under this program.
While a Center for the Performing Arts' complex may be sorely needed in Salt Lake City, nonetheless, by a two-to-one margin, the voters in 1974 turned down a bond referendum which included such a project. It is now being proposed again, under the decision of this case. However, with this new technique, hereby ratified by this court, the City fathers can avoid the voters, and move directly to bonding, just by building it in a “blighted” area. If the definition of “blight” is no tighter than that used in the instant case, it would apply almost anywhere to most of the blocks in Salt Lake City. It may be that, given the opportunity, the voters would approve such a project, if it were presented to them in isolation, without the other items included in the 1974 referendum. This would be the decent, democratic and constitutional solution, without resort to the subterfuge reflected in the instant case. The system in the present case, however, removes the voters’ check against an obligation of which they may not lend their sanction. Powerful interests are now free to inveigh upon politically sensitive and possibly over-sold public officials to induce the expenditure of public funds in all sorts of development schemes, with no voter control but with voter liability if the developments fail to produce the needed revenues and/or taxes to repay the bonds, whether or not public inducements are really needed to stimulate private enterprise investments in the “blighted” areas.
The capstone of the whole process is the opinion of this court that all that preceded was constitutional. The decision affirmed by the court was decided in a case which wasn’t really a case — it was a put up job. Now the bonding companies can sell Salt Lake City “tax increment” bonds secure in the knowledge that they have on file a decision which makes it all legal, and secure in the knowledge that even if the tax increment doesn’t suffice, the taxpayers are on the hook, anyway.
In a case of this magnitude and taxpayer concern, it seems significant that the plaintiffs here did not even bother timely to file a petition for rehearing, lending at least some substance to the credibility of this dissent.

. Counsel for Tribe and Christiansen, even, in his opening statement said “These are bonds of a particular type, and they are somewhat unique to Utah jurisprudence. This is the type of bond that, to my knowledge, is the first time this particular type of bond has been authorized.”

. Which includes such institutions as the Continental Bank, Zions First National Bank, Valley Bank & Trust, Ten Broadway Building, Kearns Building, Arrow Press Square Buildings, Capitol Theatre, Bennett Glass and Paint Building, Dinwoodeys, all of which are bounded by the Salt Palace, Zions Savings Bank, the new Main Street Beauty construction, Walker Bank, Traey-Collins Trust, Prudential Federal, and others.

. I think that nearly everyone concedes that when you want legislation passed that may be controversial, you introduce it in a Special, not a General Session to get it launched, and get it passed on the last day, — and call it by an appetizing name, such as “Neighborhood” something or other, or “Children’s Aid Program” which may be called “CAP.”

. Plaintiffs’ Exh. 7, on which this author has taken the liberty to blacken the claimed “blighted” areas and crosshatched the claimed “substandard” areas, — which Exhibit was objected to by no one, was not subject to ' any foundation to establish admissibility, and was in no way tested for authenticity or authorship in this $15,000,000 tax allocation and where the Redevelopment Agency’s name at the bottom suggests some kind of self-interest.

. Which were infinitesimally small compared to the rest of the area, and which, if “blighty” or “nuisancy,” could have been removed or suppressed by the City, by ordinance and any of one or more available remedies, with greater dispatch, with a court procedure and about one week’s employment of a bulldozer and ball in a week or so, as compared with the three or four-year R.A. so-called “Neighborhood Redevelopment” program that slithered through three or four legislatures’ comatose scenarios.

. There is nothing in the record to reflect this, except the Sheraton complex for transients.

. A generous use of erstwhile taxpayers funds.

. Which may or may not be considered a “neighborly” gesture.

. A concurring opinion suggested the increment was “evaluation” increment rather than “tax” increment. The news media advertised this suggestion. It is obviously a more palatable word, but never used in the statute. It has no application, since “evaluation” may go down while the “tax” may go up. The “tax,” — but not the “evaluation” increment is based on the mill levy.