Court Opinion

ID: 9704049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:20:06.437442+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:15.246198
License: Public Domain

*484WOLLMAN, Judge
(concurring specially).
I accept respondents' argument that the wisdom of the capital outlay fund statute, SDCL 13-16-6, is not for the court to pass on. However, when the legislature has at an earlier time enacted very complete and carefully detailed statutes governing the manner in which school districts may legally incur indebtedness for the purpose of erecting school buildings, including the specific requirements that three-fifths of all ballots cast on the question must be in favor of incurring the indebtedness, SDCL 13-19-16, and that an irrepealable levy of taxes be made for the payment of interest and principal before the issuing of any bonds, SDCL 13-16-10, and later enacts a capital outlay fund statute which in essence provides only for a discretionary annual levy of not to exceed five mills without any provision for the payment of interest and without any provision for the mandatory levy of an irrepealable tax to repay the indebtedness incurred, I believe we do no violence to legislative authority when we decline to hold that the capital outlay fund statute is in effect co-extensive with an alternative to the statutes authorizing school districts to incur and refund bonded indebtedness.
Why, one asks, did not the legislature provide for the counterpart of SDCL 13-16-10, an irrepealable annual levy to repay the indebtedness and interest, when it enacted and later amended the capital outlay fund statute? Respondents argue that there are many things that the legislature overlooks and that by virtue of Art. XIII, § 5 of our Constitution, which was interpreted by this court to be self-executing in the case of Wilson v. Board of Education, 12 S.D. 535, 81 N.W. 952, such a statute is superfluous. Superflous or not, the legislature has seen fit to enact such a statute with respect to the payment of interest and principal on bonded indebtedness. It is interesting to note that the source of the capital outlay fund statute in its present form is found in Ch. 41, Ch. 10, § 3, Laws of 1955. Section 4 of that chapter amends SDCL 13-16-10. No mention is made of any irrepealable levy to repay indebtedness created under the capital outlay fund statute. I believe that it is reasonable to conclude that the legislature did not provide for a counterpart of SDCL 13-16-10 with regard to the capital outlay *485fund statute because the legislature never intended that the statute be used as an alternative means of creating what in effect is a bonded indebtedness for the construction of school buildings. I think the same argument holds true with respect to the lack of any statute specifically authorizing the payment of interest on indebtedness incurred under the capital outlay fund statute.
SDCL 13-16-7 provides that a school board " * * * may at its discretion authorize an annual levy of a tax not to exceed five mills on the assessed valuation of the district for the capital outlay fund." If South Dakota Constitution, Art. XIII, § 5 is self-executing with respect to the repayment of indebtedness created under the capital outlay fund statute, and if SDCL 13-16-7 i'S an absolute limitation on the maximum amount that can be levied to repay the indebtedness, what result obtains in a situation where the five mill annual tax is not sufficient to raise the funds needed to meet the obligations of the school district under the installment purchase contract in the event of a disastrous reduction in the assessed valuation of the school district? The possibility of such an occurrence, however improbable it may be, further convinces me that the legislature did not intend that the capital outlay fund statute be used in a manner that creates indebtedness similar in all respects but name to bonded indebtedness incurred under the provisions of SDCL 13-19.