Court Opinion

ID: 9864727
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 15:53:48.509766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:34:15.082847
License: Public Domain

*685THE COURT.
A rehearing was granted here upon the request and stipulation of the respective parties hereto in order that the court might consider and determine a further question not presented upon the former record, but which seems to be embraced in the additional considerations set forth in said stipulation. The question thus presented is this: Had the legislature the power by and under the several acts of 1919 to provide for an appropriation of public money to be -applied to the redemption of bonds issued or to be issued under said acts when the proceeds from the sale of such bonds had been or were to be devoted to the payment of outstanding warrants issued prior to July 27, 1919, the date of said enactments, and which warrants had been issued in the prosecution of the work of reclamation and flood control undertaken in pursuance of the Reclamation Act of 1911 and of the amendments thereto made prior to the year 1919? It is the contention of the respondents herein that any application which the Reclamation Board might make or attempt to make of the installment or installments which would come under its control by virtue of our decision herein, to the redemption of bonds the proceeds of the sale of which had been or were to be applied to the payment of warrants issued on account of construction work done by such Drainage District prior to the year 1919, and to the date of approval of said appropriation act, would be void as in violation of sections 31 and 32 of article IV of the Constitution relating to gifts of public money.
We are unable to agree with this contention. The work of reclamation and flood control in that important and extensive region which is embraced within the boundaries of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District is and from its earliest inception has been considered to be essentially a public project undertaken by the state of California in its interest and in the interest of its people at large. It was so regarded by the state in its action approving the report of the California Debris Commission in the year 1911 and by the act of its legislature of that year (Stats. 1911, Ex. Sess., p. 117). It was expressly declared to be such by the enactment of the legislature of the following year amending said former act (Stats. 1913, sec. 7, p. 252-266), wherein it was stated that, “The state of California *686and the people thereof are hereby declared to have a primary and supreme interest in having erected, maintained and protected on the banks of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries and the by-passes and overflow channels mentioned herein, good and sufficient levees and embankments or other works of reclamation, adequately protecting the lands overflowed by said streams, and confining the waters of said rivers, tributaries, by-passes and overflow channels within their respective channels, and it shall be the" duty of the Reclamation Board at all times to enforce on behalf of the state of California and the people thereof the erection, maintenance and protection of such levees, embankments and channel rectification as will, in their 'judgment, best serve the interests of the state of California.” The foregoing declaration on the part of the legislature as to, the public nature of the work of reclamation and flood control which had been and was to be undertaken and carried forward to completion was in entire harmony with the conclusion which had been already reached and declared by this court as to the essentially public nature of such work in that region in the case of People v. Sacramento Drainage District, 155 Cal. 373, [103 Pac. 207], and in which case the court also concluded that since such work was essentially of such public character and benefit the legislature in so determining had power to provide either for the payment of the entire expense of such public work by the state itself through direct appropriations therefor, or to provide that some portion of the expense thereof might be imposed upon the adjacent lands specially benefited thereby, by means of assessments in proportion to such benefits. It was doubtless the foregoing declaration by this court upon both of the above questions which guided the framers of the legislation of the year 1913 (Stats. 1913, supra) and of the subsequent acts in amendation and amplification thereof down to and including the action of the legislature undertaken in the year 1919 in the three contemporaneous acts of the latter year. It is not necessary herein to review with much of detail the course of that legislation, in view of our detailed recital and examination thereof in recent cases. Two observations may, however, at this point in the discussion be aptly made.  The first of these is that the state legislature in distributing the proposed work of reclamation *687and flood control in tliis vast region among the various reclamation and drainage districts which were formed for its prosecution under the general control of the Reclamation Board, was not to be understood as creating separate and independent entitles for the carrying forward of such purposes, but was calling into being certain agencies of the state in the form of such reclamation and drainage districts for the more convenient handling of the intricate and involved details of such a gigantic undertaking. This was expressly so held by the appellate tribunal in the case of Argyle Dredging Co. v. Chambers, 40 Cal. App. 332-342, [181 Pac. 84], and also in the case of Reclamation Board, v. Chambers, 46 Cal. App. 476-481, [189 Pac. 479], both of which decisions had special reference to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District, and both of which have been given the full approval of this court in its recent decisions enunciating the same principles affecting the same district.  The fact that the state of California saw fit to commit the details of the prosecution of the work of reclamation and flood control to the various reclamation and drainage districts provided for in the several and successive legislative enactments creating these agencies and defining the scope of their activities, procedure and powers within the same, is not to be taken to have in any degree affected the attitude of the state toward the project in its entirety as to its being a public work conceived and carried forward chiefly for the benefit of the state and of its people at large. The fact that the owners of lands lying within the areas to be affected and benefited by said project and work would also be directly benefited through the restoration of their said lands to fertility and cultivation could not be held to affect the right and power of the state to provide from its public treasury all of the moneys required in the course of undertaking and carrying to completion said work. It was so expressly declared in the eases of Argyle Dredging Co. v. Chambers and Reclamation Board v. Chambers, supra, which, as we have seen, have met with the approval of this court.  This being so, we are led to our second observation, which is that the fact that the legislature, in the adoption of the plan or project for the prosecution of said work and for the provision of the funds whch would be required in the course thereof, which is to be found em*688bodied in the provisions of its enactments in 1913, 1915 and 1917, saw fit to impose the chief burden of providing such funds upon the land owners within the areas which were or were to be directly and beneficially affected through the prosecution and completion of said plan or project, did not, in any manner or to any extent, affect or diminish the power of the state through the action of its legislature to determine what portion of the burden of the cost of such improvement it would bear, nor how nor in what manner nor to what extent nor at what time it would resolve by appropriate legislation to assume and bear the same, or such proportion thereof as the development of such work might disclose to be just and practical and proper in order to carry the same to a successful consummation.  Nor do we think that the fact that the legislature in connection with the appropriation of the sum of $100,000 which it made in the year 1913 for the use of the Reclamation Board (Stats. 1913, p. 276) undertook to declare that, “The state of California shall not be liable, directly or indirectly, for any obligation, claim or liability of any kind or character, arising under, or by reason of this act, or any of the provisions thereof, in excess of the one hundred thousand dollars in and by this act appropriated,” can be held to have limited the power of the state through later legislation to make such further appropriations or direct the application thereof to the payment of the cost of such work as the progress thereof might seem to require.
With the foregoing considerations in mind we shall briefly review the salient facts in relation to the progress and cost of the work of reclamation and flood control within the Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District between the years 1913 and 1919 inclusive. By the act of 1911 (Stats. 1911, Ex. Sess., p. 117), the Reclamation Board, conformably to the report of the California Debris Commission, approved by said act, was created and its powers in the way of control over all plans and work for the reclamation and flood control along or near the Sacramento River and its tributaries were generally declared and defined. By the act of 1913 amending and amplifying said former act the drainage district to be known as Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District was created, its boundaries defined and its potvers, and procedure under the direction and control of the Reclamation Board outlined. By the terms of said act the *689Reclamation Board was invested with large powers in the way of acquiring lands, levees, easements and all such other property or material requisite or necessary for by-passes, canals, overflow channels, embankments and such other purposes as would be needful in the execution of the general project of reclamation and flood control within said district. The board was' also empowered to levy an assessment or assessments upon the lands within said district for the provision of money needed for the carrying out of the foregoing purposes ; which money when collected by the methods provided for in said act, together with all other moneys received from any source, was to be deposited with the state Treasurer in a fund which was thereby created to be known as the “Sacramento and San Joaquin District Fund”; and was to be paid out upon warrants to be drawn by the state Controller upon said fund upon the presentation to him of drafts of the Reclamation Board for construction work. In case there was not sufficient funds on hand for the payment of such warrants the state Treasurer was to indorse thereon the date of presentation and register the same; and such warrants were to draw interest thereafter at the rate of seven per cent per annum and were eventually to be paid in the order of their registration. The sum of $100,000 was appropriated for the use of the Reclamation Board, one-half of which was to be repaid the state out of the moneys received from the assessment levied and collected; and, as we have seen, the responsibility of the state for the work done or the liabilities incurred by the district in excess of the amount of said appropriation was limited thereto. The work of reclamation and flood control went forward under the provisions of said act and also of the act of 1915 amendatory thereof, wherein in section 7 thereof (Stats. 1915, pp. 1338-1340) it was again expressly declared that the state of California and the people thereof “have a primary and supreme interest” in the work of reclamation and flood control conceived and being carried forward along the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their tributaries and the lands subject to overflow by said streams. By the terms of section 20 of said act of 1915 the sum of $50,000, which by the terms of the act of 1913 was to be repaid into the state treasury, was reappropriated for the use of the Reclamation Board in the form of a continuing revolving fund, was to be *690used by the Reclamation Board from time to time for any purpose for which the funds of said board or of said district, “whether raised by assessment or otherwise provided may be lawfully used.” In the meantime the preliminary details for the levy and collection of an assessment for the purpose of providing the funds required for the prosecution of the work of reclamation and flood control were being-worked out by the Reclamation Board under many difficulties arising out of the magnitude of the undertaking and the involved and often conflicting rights of those interested in and to be primarily burdened thereby. The resultant delays and impediments' in the course of determining the amount of the assessment and the proper distribution of its burdens necessarily resulted in the present depletion of the meager funds which had already been provided during the initial stages of the project to such an extent that by the beginning of the year 1919 the registered and outstanding warrants drawn against said fund amounted to the sum of $1,340,-358.47 with accrued interest. In the meantime the amount of the assessment, which had, after various amendments,, been fixed at the sum of approximately $10,600,000, but which was subject to still further changes, remained uncollected except as to a small portion thereof, and was being impeded as to its levy and collection by litigation in various forms. Such was the condition of the project of reclamation and flood control within said district with which the legislature of 1919 was confronted. It was abundantly apparent that the state of California must provide remedial legislation of some sort in aid of its imperiled project of reclamation and flood control. The legislature of 1919 accordingly adopted the three contemporaneous acts of that year, the nature, object and interpretation of which have been set forth in detail by this court in the case of Sacramento & San Joaquin Drainage District, etc., v. Johnson, 192 Cal. 211 [219 Pac. 442]. The only one of these three contemporaneous acts with which we are particularly concerned in the instant proceeding is that providing for an appropriation of $3,000,000 in aid of said project. The purpose of said appropriation as expressed in section 1 of the act was that “of co-operation in the construction of public work included in and provided for by that certain project heretofore adopted by the reclamation board known as *691Sutter-Butte by-pass Project No. 6 of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District.” The act further contains the general provision that the money thus appropriated is to be paid to said Reclamation Board “for the benefit of said Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District in connection with said Sutter-Butte by-pass Project No. 6 or any modifications or amendments thereof that may be hereafter made in accordance with law, the same to be applied as it is now or may hereafter be provided by law.” The foregoing provisions of said act are somewhat further clarified by a reference to the provisions of the contemporaneous act of 1919 [Stats. 1919, p. 1130] purporting to amend section 34 of the Reclamation Board Act of previous years, wherein direct reference is made to the appropriation provided for in its companion statute by the provision to the effect substantially that all money which may be paid to the Reclamation Board in aid of carrying out the project of reclamation and flood control under any statute then in existence “or by any law of similar import which has been or may hereafter be adopted by the legislature of the state of California, shall be applied on said Sutter-Butte by-pass assessment No. 6 by said reclamation board to the pro rata payment of such portions of such assessment as are based upon flood control benefits”; and said amendment to said section 34 further provided that “the money so received by the reclamation board from the state shall, unless bonds based upon said assessment shall have been authorized by law, be by the reclamation board paid over forthwith to the state treasurer and by him credited to the funds of said assessment to be used and expended in the same manner as funds collected from land owners upon said assessment. But if at the time of the receipt of any such money by the reclamation board from the state bonds based upon said assessment shall have been authorized by law the money so received from the state shall be deposited by the reclamation board with the state treasurer to be held as a special fund for the redemption of such bonds and shall, under the direction and as required by the reclamation board, be applied to the payment and cancellation of such bonds. ’ ’ The clear intendment of the above interlocked provisions of these two contemporaneous acts is that whatever moneys became available to the Reclamation Board from the re*692source of said $3,000,000 appropriation was, unless otherwise directed by the legislature, to be applied to identically the same purposes to which the moneys derived or to be derived from an assessment or from whatever funds were to be provided by an authorized bond issue in and of such assessment were to be applied; that is to say, to the payment of the outstanding indebtedness of the drainage district in the form of the issued, registered but unpaid warrants which had been drawn by the district against the aforesaid fund of the Reclamation Board, regardless of the time when such warrants had been issued, but in the order of their registration. It is thus made plain that it was the purpose of the legislature through the passage of these three contemporaneous remedial acts to provide a speedy method for the liquidation of the outstanding obligations of the drainage district in the form of these issued and registered warrants which it had duly issued for work done upon this vast public project, and that the appropriation of $3,000,000 thus made by it was, unless otherwise directed, to be applied to the payment of such obligations, regardless of whether they had arisen before or were to arise after the adoption of said enactments. By so providing, the legislature of 1919 recognized and in a very definite sense reaffirmed the express declarations of the legislatures of 1913 and 1915 as to the essentially public nature of the project for reclamation and flood control within said drainage district and the supreme interest of the state of California and of its people therein and in the ultimately successful consummation thereof,
This being so, and it having been already determined that in view of the essentially public nature of said project the state of California might properly have undertaken to pay the entire cost of its prosecution at the time of its inception, we are brought face to face with the proposition as to whether the state might not also at any stage in the prosecution of said public work undertake to assume and bear such portion of the burden as it might see fit through appropriate legislative action, notwithstanding the fact that it might for the time being have laid that burden upon others; that is to say, upon the land owners of said district, by whom it was reluctantly or indifferently being borne, with the .effect of delaying or endangering the success*693ful consummation of the project itself. 'We entertain no doubt that the state in its sovereign capacity had power so to do and that in so doing to the extent of its appropriation of $3,000,000 made by the enactment of 1919, or of so much as may become available to the uses of the Reclamation Board, as the installments thereof fall due, unless otherwise diverted under the terms of said act, the state legislature would not be violating the constitutional inhibition against gifts of public money. In the case of City of Oakland v. Garrison, 194 Cal. 298 [228 Pac. 433], this court considered the scope of section 31 of article IV of the constitution as to its application to appropriations of public money in aid of projects which were essentially public in their character as distinguished from such appropriations for purely private purposes, and in so doing distinguished the earlier case of Conlin v. Board of Supervisors, 114 Cal. 404 [33 L. R. A. 752, 46 Pac. 279], from the facts of the later case; and this court in upholding the validity of the instant appropriation decided that the fact that incidentally a private use or benefit might thereby be subserved did not affect the validity of the appropriation, the main purpose and benefit thereof being a public one. We deem the principles declared in that case and the authorities therein relied upon in support of its ruling directly applicable to the instant situation. It is, however, argued by the respondents herein that this court in the cases of Sacramento & San Joaquin Drainage District v. Johnson, supra, and of Sacramento & San Joaquin Drainage District v. Riley, 194 Cal. 624 [229 Pac. 957], has decided that the owners, and holders of warrants for construction work or materials furnished said district prior to the adoption of the acts of 1919 did not have a vested right to compel the application of any portion of the $3,000,000 appropriation of that year to the preferential payment of their claims. It is true that this court so held in those cases, but it does not follow therefrom that the Reclamation Board may not apply some portion of the moneys derived from said appropriation to the liquidation of said claims when the vastly greater interest and object of such application is that of aiding the advancement of the public project of reclamation and flood control. The fact that the owners or holders of such warrants are to be benefited by the speedier adjustment of their claims *694than that already provided through the slower process of the assessment and its collection is but a minor and incidental benefit as compared with the public interest involved, a greater benefit arising from the liquidation of these warrants than that accruing- to the holders thereof accrues to the district and the land owners therein through the lessening to the extent thereof of their liability on account of the assessment; but even this benefit is overshadowed by the yet vaster benefit to the state at large from the pro tanto advancement of its greater project for reclamation and flood control in the extensive and valuable area within this drainage district; for the confinement of the waters of its principal rivers to their proper channels and for the scientific devotion of such waters to the fructification of its fertile lands. To appropriations of public money for such public purposes the inhibitions of the constitution against gifts of public money can have no application.
The former opinion of this court is hereby reaffimed.
We do not deem it necessary to extend the compulsions of the writ of mandate, at this stage of the instant proceeding, any further than that already indicated in the main opinion.
Let a writ accordingly issue.