Court Opinion

ID: 9789130
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:28:27.27463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:19.798782
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with today’s opinion. I write these additional words to dispel any possible conclusion that the court’s broad interpretation of the term “appropriations” prohibits substantive lawmaking by initiative that properly should be within the initiative power. The proposals with which we are concerned seek to get the Municipality of Anchorage out of the electrical and garbage collection utility businesses. But they do so by requiring the Municipality to sell the tangible property that it uses in those businesses.
The anti-appropriations clause of article XI, section 7 of the Alaska Constitution does not prohibit the objective of these proposals, only their means. Thus, if the proposals were phrased to directly prohibit the Municipality from, after a certain date, selling or distributing electricity or offering garbage collection services,- the anti-appropriations clause would not render the proposals illegiti*1266mate. The lesson of today’s opinion is that laws effecting substantial changes in policy can be made by initiative, but when they create surplus property, the disposition of such property is a matter for the representative lawmaking body.