Court Opinion

ID: 9597972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:04:13.687983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:40.192395
License: Public Domain

GILLETTE, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The majority opinion thoughtfully addresses the question presented by this case, but reaches a conclusion at odds with what I believe to be the correct answer. Obviously, reasonable minds may differ. My own conclusion (also reasonable, I hope) would sustain use of the funds for the parking lot but not the walkway. I therefore am required to dissent in part.
If the majority opinion has a significant analytical flaw, it is that the majority has not articulated any standards to flesh out the constitutional limitation that highway user taxes “be used exclusively for the construction, reconstruction, improvement, repair, maintenance, operation and use of public highways, roads, streets and roadside rest areas.” This criticism may be justified only to a small degree, however; the majority does not have a lot of elbow room. Such concepts as “construction, reconstruction, improvement” and the like are pretty much self defining. What concepts in Article IX, section 3a, leave some room for judicial interpretation?
Not many. At bottom, we only are asked to define more specifically the concepts inhering in the word “use” and in the phrase “public highways, roads, streets and roadside rest areas.” That is to say, we are asked whether one is using a highway when one parks on, beside or adjacent to a highway and whether a parking lot on, beside or adjacent to a highway is nonetheless a highway.1
It is not unusual to see informed experience recast old legislative language in a new form in order to remedy defects in the older version or to refocus the priorities the language is supposed to serve. That is precisely what happened here. The 1942 constitutional provision was seen as too permissive; it *547needed curtailing. To do that, a substitute constitutional provision was offered to the public. Much of the language was the same, but the public was told specific things about the future scope to be given to that language. This information, on which I agree with the majority that we should treat the public as having acted, see State ex rel Chapman v. Appling, 220 Or 41, 68-69, 348 P2d 759 (1960), assured the public that the constitutional provision would in the future be given a relatively narrow construction in order to assure that road taxes would be applied primarily to roads. Whenever constitutional language is reenacted with an explanation as to its scope that purports to define what the language will mean in the future, I would treat the explanation as the principal source of information as to the meaning of any indefinite or ambiguous portion of that language.2
Operating on the foregoing principle, I conclude that the majority correctly explains what it was that the 1980 constitutional amendment was intended to accomplish. The remaining question is whether the majority has correctly applied its understanding of the meaning of the 1980 amendment.
As to the covered walkway, the answer is yes. Of course, the point is not that this expenditure was for a walkway, or that the walkway was covered. The point is that the walkway was not a highway, road, street or roadside rest area. Had it been placed immediately beside a road for the purpose of keeping pedestrian traffic off the road surface, thereby facilitating vehicular traffic, it might have qualified under the constitutional language even if it were covered. But that is not where it was located, as I understand the record. Instead, it took foot traffic back and forth between the parking lot and the terminal. Even if the parking lot were qualified, the walkway would not be.
The parking lot is a tougher question. Clearly, even the majority believes that the constitutional language will permit funds to be used for parking spaces at the side of a highway, street or road. That is, the majority believes that *548“use” in the constitutional language has its common meaning, viz., “to put into action or service: have recourse to or enjoyment of: employ,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1971), and therefore includes space used for parking under some circumstances.
I assume this would be true even if the parking area could only be accommodated by widening the road. I am also satisfied that a much wider parking area at certain scenic points (such as those found along our coast) or at the terminus of a road would qualify. In each of these cases, the “parking area” is in fact simply a device adjacent to and connected to the road that is of great (I do not insist that it be “primary”) value to the motoring public in that it permits those who wish to stop (briefly, or for a week) to separate themselves safely from those who wish to turn around or go on. Nothing in the majority opinion really is contrary to my assumption. “Use” of what otherwise qualifies as a highway, road or street includes employing portions of that highway, road or street as a parking area.
This brings us to the parking area in this case. This parking area does all that I suggest the other examples do: it permits people arriving at a destination to which we all agree a road may be built with road tax funds to stop for a short time, for a long time, or to pass through. Therefore, if this parking lot does not qualify, it fails because it is not a “highway, street or road.” But, if it is not one of these three, the majority does not explain why it is not where (as already demonstrated) the use to which it is to be put qualifies under the constitutional language.
Even narrowly construing the authorizing language of Article IX, section 3a, I cannot see a principled justification or explanation for distinguishing between use of road tax funds for this purpose and their use for establishing other parking areas. Accordingly, and unlike the majority, I would hold that the expenditure of funds for the parking lot at Mahlon Sweet Field was permissible under Article IX, section 3a, of the Oregon Constitution. I respectfully dissent from *549that portion of the majority opinion that holds to the contrary.3

 I ignore for the purposes of this part of the analysis the question of the covered walkway. The answer to that part of the question is easier than the rest of the question.

 If the explanation instead purported to explain what the language had meant in the past, I should give it less credence, at least in those cases in which the explanation was wrong as to its history. But that is not the case before us today.

 No party has addressed — and the majority does not address — the difficult question of the appropriate scope of review in cases such as this one. However, in treating the matter as one calling for de novo review of the trial court’s decision, the majority may be using a standard inappropriate to the public law context in which issues arise under this constitutional provision.