Court Opinion

ID: 9831844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:24:42.84513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:38.496950
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In their motion for rehearing appellants urge that all amendments to the water improvement district act of 1917 must be held to apply to districts created under the conservation amendment as well as to those created under the 1904 amendment. Section 52, art. 3. This contention is based upon the proposition that both amendments relate to the same general subject-matter, the conservation of the state’s natural resources, and that “all laws theretofore existing or thereafter adopted relating to this subject-matter must be given effect to accomplish the declared policy of the state and no one provision should be given controlling effect over another.”
It is true that the two amendments relate to the same general subject-matter, and that the districts created under either have the same general objects. But the two amendments are separate and distinct, and neither isi self-enacting. In Levee District v. Looney, 109 Tex. 326, 207 S. W. 310, the Supreme Court say:
“In our opinion, however, no repeal of subdivisions A and B of section 52 of article 3 resulted from the adoption of the conservation amendment. The conservation amendment is a district constitutional provision, and had an equally distinct purpose. .That purpose was to authorize the creation of certain of the improvement districts dealt with by section 52 of article 3, freed from the limitation upon their taxing power imposed by that section. It was not intended to interfere with the organization of such districts as might desire to rest under that limitation. For this reason it was proposed and adopted, not in any sense as an amendment of section 52 of article 3, but as an original and independent provision. Jt was doubtless recognized that while in some parts of the state the needed improvement might be well accomplished within the taxing limits of section 52 of article 3, yet in others conditions were such as to render those limits inadequate for the purpose. The design, therefore, was not to supplant a'n existing taxing power, but to create an additional one. It was not to prevent the creation of districts of the limited authority elsewhere conferred in the Constitution, but simply to provide for the formation of districts of the ampler authority given by the amendment. There is, accordingly, no inconsistency between the amendment and section 52 of article 3, and the latter was not repealed by the former.” .
In order to create a conservation and reclamation district an enabling legislative act was necessary. This fact was recogniz-ed by the Governor in bis proclamation convening the fourth called session of the Thirty-Fifth Legislature, and by the Legislature in enacting the Canales Act at that session. The caption to that act recites its purpose to be "to make effective the provisions” of the conservation amendment. Section 1 of the act provides for the creation of districts under the amendment, and it is the only provision which the Legislature has ever enacted which authorizes the original creation of such districts. The power, there*263fore, to create a district under the conservation amendment must necessarily be referred to the provisions of section 1 of the Canales Act, and that section expressly by reference incorporates into the act the laws then in force governing the creation of water improvement districts. This proposition is too plain to require argument or discussion. If the Legislature, which body alone was vested with the power to provide for the creation of such districts, had intended, when the Can-ales Act was passed, that subsequent amendments to the act of 1917 should apply to section 1 of the Canales Act, it would have been a simple matter to have expressed that intention in apt language. On the contrary, the language of section 1 of the Canales Act expressly negatives such intention. It would have been equally as simple for subsequent Legislatures in amending the 1917 act to have expressed an intention to apply them to section 1 of the Canales Act. They did amend Other sections of that act, but persistently left section 1, as originally passed, undisturbed. The purpose of legislation and the general policy of the law often afford means for discovering the legislative intent, .where the language employed in a statute is of doubtful, uncertain or ambiguous purport. But we know of no rule which authorizes the resort to these expedients, where the Legislature has expressed its 'intention in language so plain as not to admit of substantial doubt.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.
Motion overruled.