Court Opinion

ID: 9573217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:49:58.762215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:12.790053
License: Public Domain

LAVENDER, Justice
(dissenting).
I am unable to concur in the majority opinion and respectfully dissent thereto for the following reasons:
I believe the pledging of motor fuel tax revenues to be received in the future violates Art. X, Sec. 23 of our Oklahoma Constitution, and I believe this Court should overrule Application of Turnpike Bonds, Okl., 365 P.2d 345, which opinion in effect approves as valid the 1961 statutory classification of a part of motor fuel revenues to be received by the State of Oklahoma as “revenues of the Oklahoma Turnpikes.” While I realize that the only constitutional justification for permitting the pledge of future gasoline taxes is to categorize them as revenues from the turnpikes, I simply am unable to agree that such taxes would be any more the revenues from the turnpikes than state sales taxes collected at the University of Oklahoma Student Union would be revenues of that institution. I am also of the opinion that the 1965 Act, insofar as the same authorizes the use of gasoline taxes accrued to the Trust Fund, prior to the effective date of such Act, to make up deficiencies in payments on the principal of the bonds is viola-tive of that part of Art. X, Sec. 19 of our Oklahoma Constitution which provides “ * * * no tax levied and collected for one purpose shall ever be devoted to another purpose, * * The only purpose for which such collections could be used prior to the effective date of the 1965 Act was to make up deficiencies in payment of interest on the indebtedness and to now authorize such funds for the additional use is, to my mind, contrary to the last cited constitutional provision. Compare 69 O.S.1961 Sec. 683(b), as amended in 1965, with 69 O.S.1961 Sec. 683 and Sec. 4(b) of Chapter 18c, Oklahoma Session Laws 1959, page 287.
I would, if I were writing the majority opinion, make the above holding concerning the future pledging of motor fuel revenues to be unconstitutional, prospective in effect so as to not affect in any way the integrity or validity of bonds previously approved by this court.
For these reasons I respectfully dissent.