City of Los Angeles v. City of Artesia

• Decision Date: 25 August 1977
• Citation: 73 Cal.App.3d 450,140 Cal.Rptr. 684
• Parties: CITY OF LOS ANGELES, etc., et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. CITY OF ARTESIA et al., Defendants and Respondents. Civ. 50389.
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 684

140 Cal.Rptr. 684

73 Cal.App.3d 450

CITY OF LOS ANGELES, etc., et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. CITY OF ARTESIA et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Civ. 50389.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 2, California.

Aug. 25, 1977.

Hearing Denied Oct. 27, 1977.

Burt Pines, City Atty., Thomas C. Bonaventura, Asst. City Atty., Ronald A. Tuller, Deputy City Atty., for appellants.

Alexander Googooin, City Atty. of respondents City of Bellflower and City of La Mirada.

Graham A. Ritchie, City Atty. of respondents City of Hawaiian Gardens and City of Industry.

John H. Larson, Los Angeles County Counsel, by Roger M. Whitby, Los Angeles, for respondents County of Los Angeles, Board of Supervisors, Hufford, Bloodgood and Pitchess.

John Sanford Todd, Lakewood, William Camil, Charles R. Martin, San Marino, Samuel Siegel, Paramount, Glenn R. Watson, Los Angeles, for remaining respondent cities, by John Sanford Todd, City Atty. of the City of Lakewood.

FLEMING, Associate Justice.

As aptly stated by the trial judge in his memorandum opinion, '(t)his action involves the latest chapter in the continuing saga of that remarkable governmental development universally known as the 'Lakewood Plan'.' Pursuant to that plan defendant County of Los Angeles ('County') has since 1954 contracted with numerous cities within the county limits--beginning with the City of Lakewood--to furnish them police protection, thereby eliminating the necessity for multiple independent municipal police forces and the needless duplication of cost and effort that such multiple police forces would engender. Some thirty of the County's 78 cities have contracts with the County for the services of the County Sheriff. (These cities are all defendants herein.) Since the start of the plan there has been considerable political dispute over the amounts to be paid by the contracting cities for the county police protection. In 1973 the Legislature entered the arena with the enactment of Government Code section 51350, here under challenge, providing as follows:

'A county having a population of 6,000,000 or more which provides services through its appropriate departments, boards, commissions, officers or employees, to any city pursuant to contract or as authorized by law, shall charge the city only those additional costs which are incurred in providing the services so contracted or authorized. A county shall not charge a city contracting for a particular service, either as a direct or an indirect overhead charge, any portion of those costs which are attributable to services made available to all portions of the county, as determined by resolution of the board of supervisors, or which are general overhead costs of operation of the county government. General overhead costs, for the purposes of this section, are those costs which a county would incur regardless of whether or not it provided a service under contract to a city.

'Any determination of general overhead costs shall be subject to court review as to the reasonableness of such determination.'

In essence the statute forbids the County to charge contracting cities for the overhead costs of police protection that the County would occur in any event in the absence of the contracts. The legislative purpose of the statute is set forth in section 2, statutes 1973, chapter 1068, as follows:

'It is the intent of the Legislature to encourage intergovernmental contracts which eliminate the need for duplicate facilities, equipment, and personnel, and which thereby reduce the overall cost of government.'

Appellants City of Los Angeles ('City') and individual council members and taxpayers of City brought this action as a taxpayers' suit under Code of Civil Procedure section 526a to enjoin implementation of the act and recover for County the amount represented by reductions in charges to the contracting cities which County has made pursuant to the statute. The trial court rendered summary judgment for defendants. The points still maintained on this appeal are as follows: (1) Section 51350 is unconstitutional as (a) special legislation and (b) an enactment denying equal protection of the laws to appellants; (2) County has improperly applied the statute retroactively to existing contracts; (3) a triable issue of fact remains as to whether County abused its discretion in determining the amount of cost reductions.

FACTS

Section 51350 of the Government Code was added by chapter 1068 of statutes 1973 offective 1 January 1974. At the time of its enactment respondent County was the only county in California with a population greater than 6,000,000. It provided contract services to 78 cities, including contracts for law enforcement services with the thirty defendant cities here. The contracts for law enforcement services in effect on 1 January 1974, were each for five years ending 30 June 1976, with provisions for termination by either party at the first of any fiscal year during the term (July 1). In October 1973 the Auditor-Controller of County recommended that the cost reductions necessary under the statute be made effective 1 January 1974, the effective date of the statute, and made specific recommendations on the nature and amount of reductions. The Board of Supervisors adopted these recommendations on 20 November 1973. Total reduction in charges for six months amounted to an estimated $617,500, or a 7.5% Reduction. The City-County agreement for Lakewood, the model for all contracts, of which the trial court took judicial notice, provided for periodic cost adjustment to reflect changes in salaries of county employees and other changes in costs of services, and it authorized a city to terminate the agreement after written notice of rate increase, on sixty days notice of termination. (Paras. 8 and 10 of Agreement.)

One of the assumptions forming the basis for the Auditor-Controller's recommendation of cost reduction is that 'if contract services program was terminated, the Sheriff's Department may continue operations at all stations.' Plaintiffs challenge this assertion. There was also a finding in the Booz, Allen & Hamilton Report prepared for defendant County (a study of equitable methods of pricing law enforcement services by counties) that the contract program comprised 48% Of the caseload, 41% Of the population, and utilized 36 percent of the general law patrol and traffic cars of the Sheriff's Department.

Constitutional Challenge to Section 51350. The test of the statute's validity under either the special legislation or the equal protection challenge is the same, namely, whether there is a rational relationship between the purpose of the enactment--to encourage police service contracts--and the singling out of Los Angeles County because of its size as the sole county affected by the statute. Numerous cases discussing the special legislation prohibitions of the California Constitution (art. I, § 7; art. IV, § 16) uphold legislation that singles out a particular class, if any rational connection exists between the statutory classification and the statute's purpose: (e.g., Great Lakes Properties, Inc. v. Rolling Hills Estates (1964) 225 Cal.App.2d 525, 533--534, 37 Cal.Rptr. 448; Sacramento Municipal Utility District v. Spink (1956) 145 Cal.App.2d 568, 572--573, 303 P.2d 46; Sacramento Municipal Utility District v. Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. (1942) 20 Cal.2d 684, 693, 128 P.2d 529; City of Los Angeles v. Standard Oil Company of California (1968) 262 Cal.App.2d 118, 123--124, 68 Cal.Rptr. 512; Lelande v. Lowery (1945) 26 Cal.2d 224, 232, 157 P.2d 639.) Similarly, under the equal protection clauses of the Federal and California constitutions (U.S.Const., 14th Amend.; Cal.Const., art. 1, § 7), since a fundamental right is not here involved (see Bixby v. Pierno (1971) 4 Cal.3d 130, 145--146, 93 Cal.Rptr. 234, 481 P.2d 242), the test is whether the statute bears some rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose. (Ganschow v. Ganschow (1975) 14 Cal.3d 150, 160, 120 Cal.Rptr. 865, 534 P.2d 705; City of Los Angeles v. Crawshaw Mortgage and Investment Co. (1975) 51 Cal.App.3d 696, 699--700, 124 Cal.Rptr. 363.) Appellants concede that no fundamental right is involved in fixing charges to cities for police protection, but they argue that the statute in question is totally without relationship to the size of the County affected. Further, they argue that the statute cannot possibly accomplish its purpose--to encourage cities to contract with County for police protection--because 30 cities have already done so and cannot be further encouraged, and the remaining 40 with independent police departments will not contract in any case. Appellants have not documented these assertions, and they are anything but self-evident. The 30 cities that have contracted are free to disavow such contracts at least once a year, and if County is permitted to charge discouragingly high rates it is at least conceivable that some of these cities might be motivated to establish their own police departments. Further, if County's charges are highly reasonable it is not inconceivable that a city having its own police force might opt to discontinue that force and contract with County; if the city so opted, it could presumably sell some of its police equipment to County and arrange for transfer of its police officers to a county payroll. Certainly the stormy political history of the Lakewood Plan, which defendants have documented, may have influenced the legislature to enact a limitation on County's charges in hopes of further securing these contracts. The contracting status of the thirty defendant cities was not immutably and permanently established in perpetuity when the Legislature enacted section 51350.

Legislation applicable solely to Los Angeles County is valid of there is any conceivable state of facts which can reasonably support difference in legislative treatment based on population. (Board of Education v. Watson (1966)...