Court Opinion

ID: 9699983
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:02:19.785507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:35.491905
License: Public Domain

WERNICK, Justice
(concurring).
I agree with the result reached in the Court’s opinion, but I would arrive at it by a different rationale of decision.
At the outset, I distinguish Farris ex rel. Dorsky v. Goss, 143 Me. 227, 68 A.2d 908 (1948). There, no emergency enactment of the Legislature was involved and, hence, Dorsky simply does not address the questions now confronting us: (1) whether the Legislature has power, in the face of a pending initiative, emergently to enact effective law substantively relating to the initiated bill and (2) if so, what is the resulting relationship arising between the effective law emergently enacted by the Legislature and the initiated bill.
I agree with the opinion for the Court giving decisional force in this actual case to the proposition advisorily stated last spring in Opinion of the Justices, Me., 370 A.2d 654 (1977), that the Constitution empowers the Legislature emergently to enact effective law substantively bearing upon the subject-matter of an initiated bill.
*1373It is a necessary corollary of this decision, in my view,.that such an emergency enactment of the Legislature is outside the operative scope of the Section 18 directive concerning an “amended form, substitute, or recommendation of the Legislature” relative to an initiated bill.
The kind of legislative enactment which may qualify as an “amended form, substitute, or recommendation of the Legislature” under Section 18 is only such as is capable of being a “measure”, thereby to be eligible to be a “competing measure” in relation to an initiated bill. The definition of “measure” in Section 20, and the manner of its utilization in Sections 16 to 19, inclusive, make plain to me that the intendment of the Constitution is that an already effective law cannot be a “measure” — a “measure” being that which is “proposed” to be, or is capable of being suspended from being, an effective law. Accordingly, I cannot attribute to the Constitution the anomaly which would result if the Constitution were held on the one hand to authorize the Legislature emergently to enact effective law and on the other hand to divest such effective law of that character by transforming it into a “measure” to be “competing” with in initiated bill. As was said in Opinion of the Justices, Me., 370 A.2d 654, 669 (1977):
“The people may use the initiative process as provided by Article IV, Part Third, § 18 to challenge emergency legislation. But even this section refers only to the people’s power to repeal emergency legislation. No mention is made of their power to suspend existing legislation. To read such a power into section 18 would be to undercut the policies expressly recognized in sections 16 and 17.”
The conclusion that an effective law em-ergently enacted by the Legislature is outside the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . .” mandate of Section 18 is buttressed by the import of the further directive in Section 18 that an initiated bill enacted by the Legislature without change is subject to the referendum.1
This latter provision indicates that the initiative is provided as a mechanism to impel the Legislature to enact a bill desired by the electors so that it shall become effective as law in the same manner as if the Legislature had been the original source of the bill. Because the referendum applies to the Legislature’s enactment without change of an initiated bill, first, an initiated bill thus legislatively enacted is not effective as law until 90 days after adjournment of the Legislature, and, second, the electors’ resort to the referendum can further suspend its effectiveness as law.
That an initiated bill enacted without change by the Legislature must take such course clarifies the function contemplated for the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . provision in Section 18. Where the Legislature fails to enact' an initiated bill without change and takes other affirmative action affecting the subject-matter of the initiated bill, absent, the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . .” directive, it would be plain that (1) the initiated bill would itself go to the vote of the electors and (2) by resort to the referendum the electors could also require submission to their vote of the enactment of the Legislature bearing upon the subject-matter of the initiated bill. By use of the referendum the electors could give themselves the options of accepting the initiated bill, accepting the enactment of the Legislature, or rejecting both.
It thus appears manifest that the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation .” mandate of Section 18, especially as implemented by the decision in Dorsky, supra, functions to save the electors effort and expense. It creates a shortcut device which avoids the need that the electors take the additional step of invoking the referendum to subject to the vote of the *1374electors an enactment of the Legislature affecting the subject-matter of an initiated bill. The “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . . ” mandate incorporates directly into the initiative an equivalent of the referendum, thereby achieving the same ultimate options for the electors as would result, if with greater effort and expense, the electors were to supplement the initiative with a resort to the referendum.
This clarification of the function of the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . . ” provision of Section 18 makes further apparent that the provision does not apply to effective law emergently enacted by the Legislature. Since (1) the Constitution plainly provides that the electors are without power to invoke the referendum against emergency enactments of the Legislature, including the emergency enactment without change of an initiated bill, and (2) as explained above, the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . . ” provision of Section 18 functions as a shortcut equivalent of the referendum, it follows that where the Legislature emergently enacts effective law affecting an initiated bill, the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . ” provision of Section 18 must be inapplicable. As the emergency nature of such enactment puts it beyond the reach of the referendum, so it places it outside the compass of the referendum’s shortcut equivalent, viz., the “amended form, substitute, or recommendation . . . ” directive of Section 18.
I therefore agree that the Secretary of State erred in treating the effective law emergently enacted by the Legislature in this case as an “amended form, substitute, or recommendation of the Legislature” relative to the initiated bill.
However, as I see the problem, there is need for further analysis beyond this conclusion.
The decision that an emergency enactment of effective law cannot, as such, go to the electors as an “amended form, substitute, or recommendation of the Legislature” precipitates, here, the further question concerning the relation between the already effective law emergently enacted which bears upon the subject-matter of the initiated bill and the future course of the initiated bill as such.
Generally, no problem need arise as to whether an initiated bill is to be submitted to the people for their approval or rejection. Moreover, generally, should the electors accept an initiated bill, it would become effective law to be interpreted and applied in conjunction with whatever effective law the Legislature may have emergently enacted. These laws may be capable of co-existing or, in particular respects, the law produced by the electors’ approval of the initiated bill may repeal by implication the law emergently enacted by the Legislature.
Yet, precisely because emergency enactments of the Legislature are effective law, the possibility cannot be ignored that their impact upon an initiated bill may be so comprehensive, and vital, as to render moot the initiated bill and require the electors to undertake a new initiative, under Section 18, to amend or repeal the effective law emergently enacted by the Legislature. This would seem more likely to be an actuality when, as here, the initiated bill has only the essentially negative thrust of being directed to the repeal of law as in existence at the time the initiative was undertaken. For example, should the Legislature see fit by emergency enactment to enact an immediately effective law entirely repealing the law which an initiated bill seeks to repeal, and the Legislature should go further and emergently enact another law on the same subject-matter but with significant substantive changes, I cannot conceive that the originally initiated bill could be deemed viable, somehow to be automatically amended and transposed to operate upon the new law emergently enacted by the Legislature.
In my view, therefore, it is a theoretical consequence of the Legislature’s power to enact emergency laws affecting the subject-matter of an initiated bill — and of the corollary of such power that an emergently enacted effective law cannot constitute an *1375“amended form, substitute, or recommendation” relative to an initiated bill — that there is potential for a law emergently enacted by the Legislature to render entirely moot an initiated bill.
Here, as I see it, the effective law emer-gently enacted by the Legislature has no such mooting impact. The initiated bill’s “Statement of Fact” sets forth the bill’s purpose as follows:
“This bill repeals the Uniform State Property tax and returns to the municipalities the authority to set the property tax rate for public school purposes.”
In contrast, the nature of the emergency legislation, as declared by the Legislature in a significant emergency preamble, acknowledges that the Legislature was not purporting to deal with underlying question of repeal of the “Uniform State Property Tax.” Quite the contrary, the Legislature considered its emergency enactments to have merely interim consequence, resolving for the immediate future particular statutory conflicts. One of the emergency declarations states expressly that the
“Legislature is currently acting upon proposals for far-reaching changes in the areas of state funding for schools and of the uniform property tax; . . . (P.L.1977, Chap. 48)
It is therefore plain to me that while the initiated bill seeks repeal of the entire substance of the “Uniform State Property Tax” as it was originally enacted in 1975, the Legislature’s emergency enactments relate solely to the necessity of avoiding interim statutory conflict until such later time as the ultimate questions of “far-reaching changes in the areas of state funding for schools and of the uniform property tax” might be resolved — including such ultimate resolution as could be produced by the electorate’s acceptance of the initiated bill.
Hence, the Legislature’s emergency enactments, although affecting portions of the initiated bill, have not rendered it utterly moot. The initiated bill, by itself, should be submitted to the electors for their acceptance or rejection.'

. Section 18 so provides in the following language:
“If the measure initiated is enacted by the Legislature without change, it shall not go to a referendum vote unless in pursuance of a demand made in accordance with the preceding section.”