Board of Revenue of Jefferson County v. Huey

• Citation: 195 Ala. 83,70 So. 744
• Decision Date: 13 January 1916
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 206
• Parties: BOARD OF REVENUE OF JEFFERSON COUNTY et al. v. HUEY et al.
• Court: Supreme Court of Alabama

70 So. 744

195 Ala. 83

BOARD OF REVENUE OF JEFFERSON COUNTY et al. v. HUEY et al.

6 Div. 206

Supreme Court of Alabama

January 13, 1916

Appeal from City Court of Bessemer; J.C.B. Gwin, Judge.

Mandamus by T.T. Huey and others against the Board of Revenue of Jefferson County and others. From an order granting the writ defendants appeal. Affirmed.

W.K Terry, of Birmingham, for appellants.

Thomas T. Huey, J.A. Estes, G.F. Goodwyn, F.R. Mathews, and W.S Welch, all of Bessemer, for appellees.

McCLELLAN J.

This proceeding looks to the issuance of a writ of mandamus to require the board of revenue of Jefferson county and its individual members to comply with the laws of the state; by providing and furnishing office or quarters for the judge of probate of Jefferson county at Bessemer, Jefferson county, as well as necessary fixtures, books, blanks, and other supplies required by law for the same; by providing and furnishing offices for the tax collector and the tax assessor and for the board of revenue of that county, at Bessemer; by providing and furnishing branch offices for county officers at Bessemer. The petition for the writ is grounded in the legislative act approved September 16, 1915 (General Acts, Sess.1915, pp. 549-553). The writ was granted as prayed. The respective counsel concur in presenting the matters decisive of the merits of the controversy, eliminating all other less vital subjects of dispute, viz., the constitutionality of the act above noted. The title of the act under review is as follows:

"An act to provide for and require all county officers of all counties in Alabama now having or which may hereafter have, a population of as much as one hundred and fifty thousand people according to the last federal census, or any such census which may hereafter be taken, to install, equip and maintain, in addition to their offices at the county sites of such counties, offices at each other place in such counties where a circuit court or court of like jurisdiction, is now authorized by law to be held, or where such court may hereafter be authorized by law to be held, for the transaction of all business pertaining thereto, that may arise in or be connected with that part of such county within which the cases arising therein, may be tried in such circuit court or court of like jurisdiction at such place, to provide for the selection, qualification and compensation and fix the powers and duties of the deputies of the respective officers of such counties, to act for and assist such officers in the discharge of their duties in connection therewith, to fix the duties of the respective county officers of such counties with reference thereto; to provide equipment for such offices, including stationery, records, books, dockets, furniture, filing cases and other equipment for such offices, similar to that kept in the respective offices of such counties at the county site; to prescribe the business of the respective offices and officers of such counties that shall be transacted at such places; to prescribe and regulate the instruments recorded thereat, and to otherwise provide for the installation, equipment and maintenance of such offices and officers at such places for the transaction of all business pertaining to such offices and officers that may arise within such territory of such counties."

Aside from two requirements made in the body of this act, to which we will later refer, the title of the act foreshadows the substance of the act. Its general purpose, particularly expressed in many provisions in the body of the act, is to establish branch offices, at Bessemer, for county officers performing county functions in Jefferson county, and to affirmatively restrict the performance of these functions with respect to matters arising in, or referable to, a certain defined territorial area in the southern part of Jefferson to the official headquarters thereof at Bessemer. In short, the effect of the act, if valid, is to forbid the performance of the therein defined county functions, by county official agencies, at Birmingham, the county site, and to require their performance at Bessemer, a place not the county seat of the county.

By an act approved February 28, 1901 (Weakley's Local Laws of Jefferson County, p. 115 et seq.), the city court of Bessemer was established; and its territorial jurisdiction was laid over precincts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 24, 27, 33, 35, 40, 41, and 7, naming, besides thus numbering, the precincts. The objections to the constitutional validity of the act of 1915 are predicated of the provisions of section 41, subdivision 11 of section 104, and sections 39, 45, and 106 of the Constitution of 1901. Section 41 provides that "no courthouse or county site shall be removed except by a majority vote of the qualified electors" of the county voting at an election held for that purpose. Subdivision 11 of section 104 provides that the Legislature shall not pass a special or local law "changing or locating a county seat." Section 39 prescribes the conditions under which the boundaries of counties may be arranged and designated and inhibits their alteration except by a vote of two-thirds of each house of the Legislature, and also fixes the territorial limits of new counties and prohibits the reduction of existing counties below a certain area and population, with defined exceptions.

It is manifest that the act of 1915 did not intend, or attempt, to effect the change of an existing county boundary or the establishment of a new county. The objection to the act rested on the provisions of section 39 of the Constitution of 1901 is without merit.

Does the act offend section 41; does it attempt to effect the removal of the county seat without the sanction of the ballot?

In the comparatively recent decision delivered here on appeal of the Bank of Lafayette v. McNaron, 172 Ala. 469, 55 So. 242, it was ruled that an act requiring the circuit court of a county to be regularly held at a point therein other than the county site did not offend the organic law prohibiting the removal of a courthouse or county site. "Courthouse" and "county site" had been held to be synonymous, and to signify "seat of government." Matkin v. Marengo County, 137 Ala. 155, 164, 165, 34 So. 171; Bank of Lafayette v. McNaron, supra. In the earlier appeal of the Matkin-Marengo County controversy (134 Ala. 275, 280, 32 So. 669, 670), Justice Sharpe, writing for the court, said of the presently pertinent provision of section 41 of the Constitution inhibiting the removal of a courthouse or county site without the sanction of the ballot:

"Judicial notice of proceedings in the late Constitutional Convention discloses that this clause was inserted in the organic law (of 1901) in response to public sentiment engendered by supposed abuses by the Legislature of the power it formerly had to change a seat of justice by direct enactment; hence the imperative prohibition of such changes except by the method defined."

As was noted in the second Matkin Appeal, supra, and renoted in Bank of Lafayette v. McNaron, supra, in at least two counties in the state (Barbour and Blount), the Legislature, previous to the adoption of the Constitution of 1901, had established branch offices for county officers, at places other than at the county sites; and also had required the convention of courts in these counties at places other than the county sites. The doctrine or McNaron's Case, supra, is that the provision of the Constitution (section 41) prohibiting the removal of a county site without the sanction of the ballot is not offended by an enactment requiring the performance of a county function or functions at a place, in a county, other than the county site. The object of the inhibition in section 41 is to prevent the removal of the county site; the abolition of a seat of county government, otherwise than as the result of an appropriate election. Section 41 was not intended to prescribe or to provide that county functions could only be authoritatively performed at the county seat. Such a seat of county government is not removed, is not abolished, is not denuded of its character as a governmental headquarters in a county, when, in good faith (Bank v. McNaron, supra), some only of the county functions are required to be performed elsewhere than at the county site. This must have been the mind of the makers of the Constitution of 1901, else the conclusion would necessarily be that the writers of the organic law of 1901 intended, and effected upon the adoption of that Constitution, the annulment of legislation authorizing and requiring the performance of certain county governmental functions at places in Barbour and Blount counties other than at their respective county sites. The Legislature of 1907 enacted laws requiring certain county functions, including the holding of the courts, to be performed at Enterprise, in Coffee county; Elba being the county site. Local Acts 1907, pp. 233, 234, 243-246, 279-288. Counterparts of many, if not practically all, of the provisions of the act of 1915, now under review, may be found in the Coffee county acts.

While a legislative construction of a constitutional provision cannot be accepted as final by the judiciary, yet it is justly influential when the provision is of doubtful meaning or effect, and this legislative interpretation of the provision has not been questioned, has been acquiesced in, and acted upon for a considerable period. Ex parte Hardy, 68 Ala. 303 318; Moog v. Randolph, 77 Ala. 597, 606; 8 Cyc. p. 737. The Coffee county acts have been in force for upwards of eight years. To now so...