Court Opinion

ID: 9536894
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:09:05.209033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:29.310542
License: Public Domain

BURKE, J.
I dissent. At the outset it should be noted that no question is presented in this case of failure to pay a pension to any member of the fire or police departments of defendant City. Instead, the case stems from a report of professional actuaries that as of October 31, 1964, the retirement fund established by Ordinance 2262 (pension ordinance) had an unfunded liability of some $2,742,899, not covered by total assets of $445,677.51. The controversy concededly relates only to the interpretation to be placed on the pension ordinance in determining the sources from which the pensions therein provided are to be financed. I am convinced that any objective view of the law and the facts compels the conclusion that under the express limitations of the ordinance and of the *353state statute (Pension Act) pursuant to which it was enacted, the City can be required to do no more than match the contributions of the employee members to the retirement fund. That this was also the intent and the understanding of the fire and police departments, who sponsored the pension ordinance and whose prior approval is (by the terms of the ordinance itself) required before the ordinance can be amended by the city council, is demonstrated by the approval given by the members of those departments to a 1959 amendment which increased their own required contributions to the retirement fund.
The ordinance, No. 2262, was enacted by vote of the people of defendant City in 1943. It contains relevant provisions not mentioned by the majority opinion and which will be more fully discussed, including the section (§16; see fn. 8, post) permitting amendment of the ordinance by the city council only after prior approval by the firemen and policemen. In 1948 and 1959 the ordinance was so amended.
As the majority opinion notes, the parties have stipulated that the people adopted the ordinance pursuant to the authority of a specified state law. (“Chapter 321 of the Statutes of 1937, as amended by Chapter 1080 of Statutes of 1941 [Pension Act1], to which statutes reference is made in section 17 of said ordinance. . . .”) To my mind, the three city council resolutions which preceded the adoption of the pension plan and an ordinance (No. 2256) adopted by the council giving effect to the plan, discussed by the majority, demonstrate unequivocally that the pension ordinance was adopted under and pursuant to the authority of the Pension Act, and support the stipulation of the parties to that effect.2 Further, such *354resolutions and Ordinance 2256 disclose that in adopting the pension ordinance the City followed every procedural step laid down in the Pension Act; the pension ordinance itself includes every mandatory provision required by the Pension Act; and none of the other provisions of the pension ordinance violates any requirement or specification of that act. The Pension Act obviously does not purport to set forth in toto every provision which an ordinance adopted under it shall contain, but the act does lay down certain requirements and limitations, with each of which the pension ordinance here in issue complied. Additionally, the record shows that the City’s firemen and policemen actively participated in drafting the pension ordinance.3 This fact, plus provisions of the Pension Act and of the ordinance, hereinafter pointed out, making the adoption, enlargement, and amendment of the fire and police retirement system of the City subject to the prior approval of the members of those departments, leaves no room in this case for the blind application of the general principle of liberal construction of pension laws, here espoused by the majority, to impose upon the City, which. means upon its taxpayers, an unlimited and continuing obligation in contravention of the provisions of the Pension Act and of the pension ordinance, taken either singly or together.
As noted in Klench v. Board of Pension Fund Comrs. (1926) 79 Cal.App. 171, 187 [249 P. 46], cited by the majority, ‘ ‘ Of course, these rules of statutory construction, as applied to pension laws, are of no consequence where the *355language itself of the statute is sufficiently clear or free from obscurity as to reasonably remove all doubt as to its meaning or the legislative intent with respect thereto.” Both the Pension Act and the pension ordinance of defendant City are so clear as to remove doubt as to their meaning and the legislative intent of the legislators and the people who enacted them, and each of such enactments plainly limits the City’s pension liability to that of matching the pension fund contributions of the members of its police and fire departments.

Limitation on Liability Under Pension Act

The Pension Act provides an alternative procedure4 by which “Any city within this State” is “authorized to adopt by ordinance a retirement or pension system for its officers and employees ...” upon ‘‘ a majority vote of the electorate of the city or by approval of a two-thirds majority of the governing body of such city.” (§1.) City employees are divided into three groups (firemen, policemen, others), and no group can be included in the retirement system unless a majority of the members thereof have expressed by secret ballot their approval of the proposed system. (§2.)
Section 3 of the Pension Act directs that the ordinance establishing the system shall provide for various matters, including inter alia “(a) The amount of benefits” and the terms and conditions of payment thereof, “(b) The contribution to be paid” to the retirement fund by each covered employee, and “(c) The contribution to be paid by the city to the pension and retirement fund, which . . . shall not exceed the total contribution paid to the . . . fund by the . . . employees.” (Italics added.)
Ordinance 2262 does provide for the amount of benefits (§§ 3, 4, etc.) and for the contribution to be paid to the fund by each employee (§10). It further provides (§10) that the City shall place in the fund “not less than the amount contributed” by the employees.5 (Italics added.)
Inasmuch as the City adopted Ordinance 2262 under and *356pursuant to the authority of the Pension Act, the City is bound by the provisions of that act. (See Klench v. Board of Pension Fund Comrs., supra, 79 Cal.App. 171, 177, 180.) Moreover, the requirement found in section 10 of the ordinance that the City contribute ‘ ‘ not less than the amount contributed each month by each member” (italics added) comports with the requirement of section 3, subdivision (c), of the Pension Act that the City’s contribution shall, conversely, be not more than the total contributions of the employees. The voters by their approval of the ordinance thus expressed their willingness that the City make the maximum regular contribution to the pension and retirement fund which is permitted under subdivision (c) of section 3 of the Pension Act.6 In this connection it should be noted that under section 6 of the Pension Act the City “may levy and collect annually” a special property tax “to meet the obligation of the city to the said pension and retirement fund as defined and limited by subdivision (c) of section 3 hereof; which said rate of taxation may be in addition to the annual rate . . . allowed by law to be levied in said city. ’ ’ (Italics added.)
Further, under section 5 of the Pension Act the City is permitted to “enhance” the retirement fund over and beyond the required contributions, by transferring to such fund ‘ ‘ any surplus funds of said municipality which in the sound discretion of said legislative body may properly be used for such purpose.” However, by reason of the maximum imposed by the Pension Act on required contributions, the City cannot be compelled to contribute more.
The majority opinion (ante, pp. 345-348) undertakes at great length to discuss the powers of “home rule” cities such as defendant City of Eureka, and to overrule this court’s opinion in Blake v. City of Eureka (1927) 201 Cal. 643 [258 P. 945], with respect to the scope and effect of section 191 of the City’s charter as it existed at the times here involved.7 *357Without here undertaking to detail the unsoundness of the majority’s reasoning, it is appropriate to emphasize that since the City in actuality did proceed under general state law as found in the Pension Act here involved, there is no occasion to consider whether attempted enactment of a retirement and pension ordinance in disregard of general law would have fallen afoul of former section 191 of the charter.

City’s Liability as Expressed in Ordinance 2262

Additionally and in any event the terms of Ordinance 2262 themselves limit the City’s liability to that of matching the contributions of its covered fire and police employees. A limitation on a city’s obligation to contribute to a pension fund is, of course, valid and will be given effect. (Houghton v. City of Long Beach (1958) 164 Cal.App.2d 298, 303-305 [1] [330 P.2d 918].)
In construing Ordinance 2262, it should be recalled at the outset that the general state law (Pension Act) pursuant to which it was enacted, specifies in section 2 that the retirement and pension system established by the ordinance could include no group of City employees (firemen, policemen, others) which had not previously approved the system. As noted hereinabove (see fn. 2, ante), the firemen and policemen of defendant City by secret ballot did approve the system.
Further, Ordinance 2262, which establishes a retirement system for only the police and fire departments of defendant City, who had expressed their required advance approval, itself provides (§17) that other municipal employees may be included in the system ‘‘ only by a majority vote of such other” employees “held in accordance with” the Pension Act, and a majority vote of fire and police department members and of the city council; and if so approved for inclusion such other employees “shall be required to fulfill such demands and requirements as fixed by the members of the Fire and Police Department and the City Council in order to make up past contributions. ...” (Italics added.) Moreover, *358amendments to Ordinance 2262 are by its own terms (§16) permitted only after previous approval thereof by a majority of the members of the fire and police departments, voting separately by secret ballot upon each proposed amendment.8 With the original sponsorship by those departments of the fire and police retirement system of the City, and with the adoption, enlargement, and amendment of the system thus made subject to the prior approval of the members of such departments, this clearly is not an appropriate case for application of the statement from England v. City of Long Beach (1945) 27 Cal.2d 343, 348 [163 P.2d 865], cited by the majority (ante, p. 351), that “We must, of course, reject any theory that the provisions of the charter were designed to create an appearance of granting pensions while at the same time withholding the benefits by providing inadequate funds,” or of a fiction that the City induced reliance by its fire and police departments upon reasonable expectations which the City now seeks to defeat. Instead, upon any fair view of this ease, it is the City which is entitled to invoke in its own favor the principle of inducement, reliance and reasonable expectations that its employees would abide by the clear provisions of the retirement and pension system which they sponsored and in large part control. The majority opinion arrives at its result by simply omitting to discuss, and thus in effect writing out of the ordinance the provisions, hereinafter pointed out, which expressly limit the liability of the City to that of matching the contributions of its covered fire and police employees.9
*359Section 10 of the ordinance, which specifies that the contribution of each member shall be five percent of his monthly-salary (7 percent by 1959 amendment), “as a basic rate,” and requires the City to match such employee contribution, also states that “contributions made, either by gift, devise or from any other source, for the purpose of adding to such . . . Retirement Fund, shall be received and placed therein without any [employee contributions] ... or contribution by the City ... to match the same. . .” (Italics added.)
Section 11 then provides that if the donations, employee contributions, and City contributions are inadequate to pay the benefits provided by the ordinance, then the employee contributions “may be increased by a majority vote of the members of the Fire Department, Police Department and Council of the City of Eureka, to be matched by a similar increase by the City. . . . The increase to be effective must have a majority vote in each Department and in the Council. If no increase is voted and there shall not be sufficient moneys in the Fund to make the payments herein provided, then such payments shall be reduced pro rata . . . [but] said pro rata reduction . . . can only be made by a majority vote of the members of each Department and the City Council and only in an amotcnt agreed upon by said three Departments. ...” (Italics added.)
Thus, no increase in contributions can be required from either the covered employees or the City until after advance approval by each employee group and by the city council. This section 11 limitation plainly restricts the City’s required contribution to that of matching the employee contributions. Particularly is this true in the light of the section 10 provision that neither the employees nor the City shall be required to match third-party donations to the retirement fund.
Although at first reading there might appear to be an anomaly in the declaration of section 11 that if no increase is voted and there is not sufficient money in the fund “to make the payments herein provided, then such payments shall be reduced pro rata” but only upon prior approval of the reduction and the amount thereof, by each employee group and by the city council, any seeming inconsistency disappears when that provision is weighed in the light of other pro*360visions found in Ordinance 2262. Section 3, after laying down the conditions for retirement on half pay which “shall he paid from such [retirement] Fund,” then declares “that said' one-half payable is the basic rate and shall be determined by the Commission in accordance with the amount of money in the Fund, as hereinafter provided; ...” (Italics added.) As already noted, section 10 also specifies a percentage of monthly salary to be contributed by each covered employee “as a basic rate. ’’
It is thus apparent that those who had a hand in drafting Ordinance 2262, including covered members of the fire and police departments whose prior approval of the ordinance was a prerequisite to inclusion in the retirement system, considered the contingency of insufficient money in the fund to make the pension payments provided, and concluded that in such event three options should be available:
1. By mutual consent of the members and the city council, the contributions of members and of the City could be equally increased, or
2. By mutual consent of both, benefit payments could be reduced pro rata, or
3. Full benefits could be paid until exhaustion of available moneys in the retirement fund.
This was obviously the construction placed on the ordinance by the members of the fire and police departments when they approved the 1959 amendment increasing their required contributions to 7 percent of monthly salary, from the previous 5 percent. (See ante, fns. 5 and 8.) Further, such a construction does no violence to the direction of section 12 of the ordinance that if a covered fireman or policeman who is not entitled to retirement benefits permanently leaves the service, his contributions to the fund, plus reasonable interest, shall be returned to him or his survivors, all of whom(§ 19) are declared to have a property interest therein for withdrawal purposes. (See also §7.) As the City emphasizes, this requirement necessarily means that the retirement commission must at all times have and hold in the fund trust assets10 equal in value to the total amount of contributions made by all nonretired members, plus the interest, and that such assets *361are not available for payment of benefits to retired members. Further, under the declaration of section 19 of the ordinance that each member has “an estate to his dependents and heirs in a sum equivalent to the amount he shall have contributed, plus a reasonable rate of interest, less any deductions provided,” the additional limitation is imposed that the contributions of each member may be used only for the purpose of providing the pension payable to him or his survivors. Thus it is only in the event that a nonretired member dies without heirs that (under §§7 and 1211) his contributions would become available (as are City contributions and third-party donations) for pension payments to retired members.
This construction of the various provisions of Ordinance 2262, many of which are not mentioned in the majority opinion, gives a practical and consistent meaning to all, and thereby accords with the intent of the ordinance taken as a whole and with one of the most basic tenets of statutory construction. Moreover, it comports with the state statute pursuant to which the ordinance was adopted. It necessarily follows that the City’s liability under the ordinance is limited to matching the employee contributions and that, accordingly, the judgment should be reversed.
Traynor, C. J., and McComb, J., concurred.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied October 9, 1968. Traynor, C. J., McComb, J., and Burke, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

Those statutes were codified in 1949 (Stats. 1949, eh. 79, p. 249) as article 1 (commencing with § 45300) of chapter 2 of division 5 of title 4 of the Government Code. However, in this opinion all references will be to the statutes and the sections thereof as they existed when Ordinance 2262 was adopted in 1943.

Resolution No. 3339, adopted May 4, 1943, contains in its title and in the body of the resolution a declaration that the proposed ordinance is for the purpose of establishing a retirement fund for the city policemen and firemen in accordance with the 1937 Pension Act. The resolution then recites that under the Pension Act, before the proposed ordinance can be presented for passage, a vote by secret ballot must be taken by the members of each such department separate from the other for their approval or disapproval of such retirement proposal, and then proceeds to make provision for submitting the proposed ordinance to the firemen and policemen for their secret ballot.
Resolution No. 3341, adopted by the city council on May 10, 1943, declares the results of the elections held in the two departments pursuant to the 1937 Pension Act and of the vote of the council on the proposed *354pension ordinance, and orders an ordinance to be drafted to place the proposal on the ballot at the general municipal election to be held on June 21, 1943.
Ordinance 2256, adopted on May 18, 1943, likewise relates that the pension ordinance was being proposed in accordance with the Pension Act and directs that the proposed pension ordinance be submitted to the electorate at the general election to be held June 21, 1943.
Resolution No. 3348, adopted June 29, 1943, declares in pertinent part that the proposed pension ordinance was voted upon at the June 21, 1943, general election and carried by a vote of 2991 to 830.

The minutes of a city council meeting held March 16, 1943, relate that “A letter from the Chief of Police and a letter from the Fire Department and the proposed ordinance regarding the creation of a retirement fund . . . were read and discussed. Mr. Deo Schussman, representing the Firemen, stated that the firemen had studied this proposition for over a year and had obtained ordinances from many other cities, and that the ordinance presented was made up from the favorable parts of all of these other ordinances. The plan, he stated, would go into effect for first payments at the end of five years. . . . Councilman Franeeschi moved and Councilman Berry seconded that the matter be referred to the Committee of the Whole to meet with a committee from the Fire and Police Departments, the date to be set by the President of the Council. The motion carried. . .

Pension Act, section 8: “ This act shall not be deemed to repeal any existing acts under which pension or retirement systems may have been heretofore adopted, but is intended to be and is an enabling act providing an alternative procedure for the establishment of [such] systems. ...”

 As originally enacted, section 10 provided that the contribution of each employee should be S percent of his regular monthly salary. By 1959 amendment, after prior approval of the employees, this contribution was increased to 7 percent, thereby automatically increasing by a like amount the City’s required contributions.

 As noted in footnote 3, ante, the firemen and policemen of defendant City actively participated in drafting the pension ordinance, and accordingly may fairly be credited with the section 10 provision that the City's regular contribution should be the maximum permissible under the Pension Act pursuant to which the ordinance was adopted.

Charter section 191: "All improvements, actions, proceedings, matters and things not otherwise provided for in this charter shall be taken, had, and conducted under and in pursuance of the provisions of the laws of the State of California applicable thereto, in force at the time such improvements [etc.] are taken and had.” (Italics added; Stats. 1895, p. 403.)
In 1959 the City adopted a new charter which carried over and incorporated as section 912 the provisions of section 191 of the 1895 charter. *357(Stats. 1959, pp. 5604, 5622.) In 1965 section 912 of the 1959 charter was amended to read: “Procedures. The City shall have the power to and may act pursuant to any procedure established by any law of the State, unless a different procedure is required by this Charter. ’ ’ (Italics added; Stats. 1965, p. 5307.)
Thus, by the 1965 change of the word “shall” to the word “may,” in section 912, the former limitations imposed by the charter itself upon the City’s power with respect to matters of municipal concern were removed. The statement to the contrary in the majority opinion (fn. 4 thereof) demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the charter provisions.

Section 16: “This Ordinance . . . may be amended in the following manner, to-wit: That any proposed improvement or amendment shall be voted upon by secret ballot in the Fire Department and Police Department, separately, . . . [and if] passed by a majority vote by each said . . . Department, then if the Council, by a majority vote, shall pass such proposed amendment, the same shall become effective and binding.’’ (Italics added.)

 Although not discussed in the majority opinion, it bears mentioning that plaintiffs have advanced the patently unsound argument that if it had been intended that the City’s liability would be limited to matching the employee contributions, then the ordinance would not have provided that the City contribute “not less than the amount contributed each month by each member” of the two covered departments. (Italics added.) But had" the words “not more than” been used a conflict would have existed with the language of section 5 of the Pension Act which authorizes, but does not require, the City to enhance the fund by transfer of any surplus funds of the City.
As already noted, the quoted language “not less than” must necessarily be construed in the light of the limitation imposed by the Pension Act under which Ordinance 2262 was enacted and which restricts the City’s required contribution to not more than the total employee contri*359bations. Additionally, other provisions of the ordinance discussed herein-below clearly demonstrate that the only mandatory contribution to which the City obligated itself was that of matching the contributions of the members of its fire and police departments,

See Jorgensen v. Cranston (1962) 211 Cal.App.2d 292, 300-301 [27 Cal.Rptr. 297]; Sheehan v. Board of Police Comrs. (1922) 188 Cal. 525, 530 [206 P. 70] ; of. Benson v. City of Los Angeles (1963) 60 Cal.2d 355, 365 [8] [33 Cal.Rptr. 257, 384 P.2d 649].

Both sections 7 and 12 provide that in the event of death of a member without heirs, his contributions shall remain in the retirement fund.