Court Opinion

ID: 9595340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:39:14.197828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:14.720723
License: Public Domain

Epes, J.,
dissenting:
I am unable to concur in either the conclusion or the reasoning of the opinion of the court, but shall not enter upon any extended discussion thereof. It seems to me sufficient to say:
*712Sections 636-645, Ya. Code, as enacted by Acts 1928, chapter 471, page 1197, et seq., authorizing and providing for loans to counties and cities from the literary fund, impress upon the obligation assumed by a county or city procuring such a loan every incident of a debt in the ordinary acceptation of the term.
Under section 134 of the Constitution an act of the General Assembly relieving a county or city of the payment of such obligation once it has been contracted by the county or city is null and void.
Section 115-a of the Constitution provides:
“No debt shall be contracted by any county, or by or on behalf of any school board of any county, or by or on behalf of any school district in any county, except in pursuance of authority conferred by the General Assembly by general law; and the General Assembly shall not authorize any county, or any district of any county, or any school board of any county, or any school district in any county, to contract any debt except to meet casual deficits in the revenue, a debt created in anticipation of the collection of the revenue of the said county, board or district for the then current year, or to redeem a previous liability, unless in the general law authorizing the same provision be made for the submission to the qualified voters of the proper county or district for approval or rejection, by a majority vote of the qualified voters voting in an election, of the question of contracting such debt; and such approval shall be a prerequisite to contracting such debt. No script, certificate or other evidence of county or district indebtedness shall be issued except for such debts as are expressly authorized in this Constitution or by the laws made in pursuance thereof.”
The fact that a loan from the literary fund is a debt seems to me to be beyond question; and the language of section 115-a of the Constitution, I think, is too plain and *713comprehensive to admit of circumvention by astute legal refinements.
I am of opinion that such loans from the literary fund are debts within the plain meaning of section 115-a of the Constitution; and cannot be contracted without submission to a vote of the people.
HuDorNS, J., concurs in the dissent of Epes, J.