County of Rensselaer v. Regan

• Decision Date: 31 December 1991
• Citation: 578 N.Y.S.2d 274,173 A.D.2d 37
• Parties: COUNTY OF RENSSELAER et al., Respondents, v. Edward V. REGAN, as Comptroller of the State of New York, et al., Appellants.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

Page 274

578 N.Y.S.2d 274

173 A.D.2d 37

COUNTY OF RENSSELAER et al., Respondents, v. Edward V. REGAN, as Comptroller of the State of New York, et al., Appellants.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division Third Department.

Dec. 31, 1991.

Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen. (Denise A. Hartman and Peter H. Schiff, of counsel), Albany, for appellants.

Thuillez, Ford, Gold & Conolly (Michael J. Hutter, of counsel), Albany, for respondents.

Richard E. Mannix (John T. Casey, Jr., of counsel), Albany, for Clarence D. Rappleyea, amicus curiae.

Before WEISS, J.P., and MIKOLL, YESAWICH, LEVINE and MERCURE, JJ.

LEVINE, Justice.

Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court (Kahn, J.), entered April 1, 1991 in Albany County, which partially granted plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and declared a certain appropriations provision in the 1990-1991 State Operations Budget to be unconstitutional. 151 Misc.2d 552, 573 N.Y.S.2d 345.

In 1981, the Legislature enacted Vehicle and Traffic Law article 43-A, later reenacted as present Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1197 (L.1981, chs. 910, 913; L.1988, ch. 47, § 26), to encourage localities to establish a county-wide "special traffic options program for driving while intoxicated" (hereinafter STOP-DWI) aimed at reducing alcohol-related traffic injuries and deaths through coordinated efforts within the counties for better enforcement, prosecution and prevention of drunken driving. Each county wishing to participate was required to submit a program to be approved by the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles (see, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1197[7], who is required to monitor the county program thereafter (see, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1197[8][b]. The STOP-DWI legislation offered an incentive to counties to participate by providing that all fines, penalties and forfeitures imposed by the various courts of the county in intoxicant-related offense prosecutions would be diverted from State revenues to the county where the offense was committed and deposited in a special account to fund the local program (see, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1197[1][a]; § 1803[1][a]. Fines, forfeitures and penalties on such offenses collected by courts of the Unified Court System, including county, city and district courts and the civil and criminal courts of the City of New York, are to be paid directly by those courts to the county within the first 10 days of the month following collection (see, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1803[9][a]. Other courts (e.g., town and village justice courts) are required to remit such fines, penalties and forfeitures to defendant Comptroller, who then "shall pay these funds to the county in which the violation occurs" (Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1803[9][b].

All the counties of the State elected to participate in the STOP-DWI program and they received all of the moneys collected in drunken driving and related prosecutions from the courts within their respective geographical boundaries until the adoption of the 1990-1991 State Operations Budget. That budget bill contained a provision directing the Comptroller to "collect, withhold and receive and deposit to the credit of the general fund up to two percent of revenues received in any court" pursuant to the STOP-DWI program, for the costs of the Department of Motor Vehicles (hereinafter DMV) in carrying out its statutory responsibilities under the STOP-DWI legislation.

Plaintiffs, consisting of five STOP-DWI participating counties, the STOP-DWI Coordinators Association and the STOP-DWI Coordinator of Rensselaer County, brought this action to declare unconstitutional the foregoing provision in the 1990-1991 State Operations Budget. They asserted three grounds for invalidity under the State Constitution: (1) a violation of article V, § 1 in that it imposes upon the Comptroller duties not incidental to his constitutional duties, (2) a violation of article III, § 1 because it imposes lawmaking duties without adequate guidelines, and (3) a violation of article IX, §§ 1 and 2 because the appropriation interferes with the home rule powers of the counties. Defendants answered and raised lack of standing as an affirmative defense. Plaintiffs then moved for summary judgment. Defendants opposed the motion and requested judgment in their favor. After granting the motion of Clarence Rappleyea, Minority Leader of the State Assembly, to file a brief amicus curiae, Supreme Court "assumed" plaintiffs had standing, and then proceeded to declare the challenged appropriations provision unconstitutional on the ground that the discretion afforded the Comptroller thereunder to determine the amount to be withheld from STOP-DWI funds up to the 2% maximum and to determine from which courts in which counties to withhold the funds violated N.Y. Constitution, article V, § 1. This appeal followed.

We affirm. Although we agree with defendants that Supreme Court should not have assumed plaintiffs' standing before deciding the constitutional challenge in their favor, we find that the county plaintiffs do have standing here because they are asserting a proprietary claim of entitlement to a specific fund, namely, their entitlement to receive all of the fines, forfeitures and penalties collected by the courts in proceedings on the offenses specified in the STOP-DWI legislation. This is sufficient for purposes of conferring standing to challenge the validity of subsequent legislation impairing their entitlement to that fund (see, Matter of City of New York v. Lawton, 128 A.D.2d 202, 206, 515 N.Y.S.2d 903; Purcell v. Regan, 126 A.D.2d 849, 850, 510 N.Y.S.2d 772, lv. denied 69 N.Y.2d 613, 517 N.Y.S.2d 1029, 511 N.E.2d 88). The case of Matter of Town of Moreau v. County of Saratoga (142 A.D.2d 864, 531 N.Y.S.2d 61), relied upon by defendants, is readily distinguishable. In Town of Moreau, the fund the petitioner town claimed entitlement to was a share in county sales tax revenues, but the very statute relied upon to establish that entitlement made it subject to the right of the county to expend all tax proceeds for county and educational purposes or to enter into an agreement with cities in the counties whereby no tax revenues would be diverted to any town (see, id., 142 A.D.2d at 865, 531 N.Y.S.2d 61). Thus, it was concluded in Town of Moreau that the petitioners' interest in the county sales tax revenues was too speculative to confer standing. Contrastingly, the county plaintiffs' right to share in the STOP-DWI funds here was unconditional and absolute under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1197, prior to the enactment of the 1990-1991 appropriations provision.

Turning to the merits, the dispositive issue here is whether the challenged 1990-1991 appropriations provision is invalid as violating the constitutional constraint that the Legislature "shall assign to [the Comptroller] no administrative duties, excepting such as may be incidental to the...