Court Opinion

ID: 9709060
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:39:14.834329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:45.714925
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that Section 471 of the Pennsylvania Public Welfare Code, as originally enacted, required each county to participate in the Federal Food Stamps Program and thus impliedly repealed Section 1991 of the Pennsylvania County Code providing for voluntary adoption. In order *243to arrive at this conclusion the majority interprets the phrase “for each county or city of the first class” as ambiguous and therefore looks to legislative intent and finds the legislature must have intended to mean every county regardless of its class and cities of the first class. I must dissent.
The majority is attempting to reach a desired result when it finds the phrase ambiguous. In fact, it is a strained interpretation which reads the phrase “of the first class” as modifying only “city” and not “county.”
The Commonwealth Court was correct when it stated: “On its face, Section 471, as originally enacted, was limited to counties and cities of the first class; a local government classification to which Adams County does not belong. The Department would apparently have us construe this to read ‘every county, and for each city of the first class’ and, in quoting the statute in its brief, has employed ellipses to create such an illusion. However, ‘[wjhen the words of a statute are clear and free from all ambiguity, the letter of it is not to be disregarded under the pretext of pursuing its spirit.’ Statutory Construction Act of 1972, 1 Pa.C.S. § 1921(b).
The language, ‘every county, and for each city of the first class’ is, in fact, employed in the 1976 amending Act of Section 471 of the Code but reliance upon such language as indicating a past liability would ignore the rule of statutory construction that ‘new provisions [of an amended statute] shall be construed as effective only from the date when the amendment became effective,’ in this case April 1, 1976. Statutory Construction Act of 1972, 1 Pa.C.S. § 1953. The amended Section 471 purports only to terminate liability for those counties and those cities of the first class which had been participating in the program and thereby incurred liability. It can be construed as doing no more.”
30 Pa.Cmwlth. 164, 167-68, 373 A.2d 143, 145 (1977). I therefore dissent.
POMEROY, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.