Court Opinion

ID: 9582107
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:22:42.445007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:27.710678
License: Public Domain

Hall, Justice,
dissenting as to Division 2 and the judgment.
While I concur with Division 1 of the majority opinion holding the rollback provisions unconstitutional, I cannot agree with the holding in Division 2 that once the unconstitutional provisions of the Act are removed there is enough remaining to preserve the legislative referendum scheme. We must always remember that we are a court of law and not a super-legislative body.
Applying the Elliott v. State test, supra, I conclude that the entire Act must fall because absent the differential rollback provision which we have held invalid, the purpose of the legislature is impossible for me to divine. Numerous parties and amici curiae have filed briefs in this case, and though there is consensus among them that some ad valorem tax relief was intended by the legislature, the intended formula for distribution of those benefits is variously interpreted and strongly contested. I cannot substitute my judgment for the legislature’s and rewrite this statute extensively, as we have been urged to do and as the majority opinion does. The differential rollback provision lies at the heart of the legislature’s purpose. As it cannot stand, neither should the remainder of the Act.
Of conclusive importance to this point is the fact that the tax Act in question was imposed pursuant to a referendum. That means that the Whitfield County taxpayers who voted for or against the local option sales tax did so on the basis of the rollback provisions as drafted *347by the legislature. If those rollback provisions are void and must be changed, how can we say how the voters would have voted upon a substitute proposal. In any event the provisions should not be rewritten by this court, for to do so would thwart the intention of the voters as expressed in the referendum results.
Furthermore, there is another alleged substantial flaw in the Act which has not been passed upon by either the trial court or by the majority opinion. It is the enumeration of error that the Georgia Constitution is violated by the Act’s grant to a municipal government of tax funds resulting from a levy by a county government. If that provision should also fall, the Act would be without question in utter shambles.
In my opinion the Act should fall in its entirety.