Court Opinion

ID: 9687207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:18:51.146534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:24.790919
License: Public Domain

BIEGELMEIER, Judge
(dissenting).
I join in Judge Winan-s' dissent which is a shortened version of his proposed opinion in this appeal. In it he carefully reviewed the opinions of this and other courts and lucidly demonstrated that the course of action of defendant Board in passing the resolutions under the authority of Ch. 134, S.L.1971 was unconstitutional. My thoughts on this subject have not changed and are found in my dissent and the dissent of Judge Rentto in McFarland v. Barron, 1969, 83 S.D. 639, 164 N.W.2d 607. It is no different for the state to authorize the refinancing of a bond issue (debt to me) of $8,957,000 on five buildings where four of them are subject to that lien and one is free of incumbrance than it is when each may be subject to liens varying from $50,000 (or less) to three or four million dollars. The people of the state are owners of a building worth a million dollars subject to a debt of $50,000 one day (an equity of $950,000) and the next day that equity disappears and the building is subject to the $8,957,000 claim.
I am mindful of the semantics that each bond states on its face it is "not a general obligation of the Board * * w or the State of South Dakota, and does not create an indebtedness *750* * * of the State". But the fact and law is that the bondholders can effectively take over the buildings to force payment of their claims.
It seems the legislature, by the fruitfulness and inventiveness of the human mind, has by one device or another slowly eroded the proscription or limit of debt in Section 2, of Art. XIII of our Constitution so that "debts" are not "debts" — they are merely something you must pay.