Dickinson v. Stone, 41377
| Decision Date | 03 August 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 41377,41377 |
| Citation | 251 So.2d 268 |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
| Parties | Fred O. DICKINSON, Jr., as Comptroller of the State of Florida, and as Head of the Department of Banking & Finance, Petitioner, v. Honorable Richard B. STONE, as Secretary of State and as Head of the Department of State et al., Respondents. |
Larry Levy, Asst. Gen. Counsel, for petitioner.
Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., and Daniel S. Dearing, Chief Trial Counsel, for Department of Legal Affairs, for respondents.
Clinton H. Coulter, Jr., Tallahassee, for respondent, Richard B. Stone, Secretary of State.
James E. Joanos, Tallahassee, for Richard A. Pettigrew, as amicus curiae.
This is an original proceeding in mandamus brought by the Comptroller and Head of the Department of Banking & Finance against the Secretary of State, the Executive Director of the Department of General Services and the Department of General Services, raising constitutional questions concerning the validity of § 2, Ch. 71--357, Laws of Florida, the General Appropriations Act, the pertinent part of which provides:
'Section 2. The moneys in the following items are appropriated from the named funds for the 1971--72 fiscal year to the electronic data processing division of the department of general services for the centers indicated, as the amounts to be used to pay the salaries and other expenditures of the named data centers.
'It is the intent of the legislature that the electronic data processing division of the department of general services shall assume complete control and supervision of the designated data centers in this section, including accounting, purchasing, personnel and other administrative services for the purpose of providing adequate data processing services to the various users of these centers. Further, the electronic data processing division of the department of general services is directed to provide programming and coordination, to the end that all centers function efficiently and economically and render all possible service to the state departments and agencies serviced.
'Each center will bill the user for services performed, based upon a cost allocation system which will include a percentage of machine time, overhead, etc. Bills to the user will be for services performed and not a percentage of that amount appropriated to that agency for data processing services provided, however, that the department of administration may transfer funds appropriated for the payment of data processing services between departments to carry out the purpose of this section, and to permit departments to meet their data conversion requirements in the event the OCR center does not perform efficiently and economically, and is unable to meet these requirements.
(Emphasis supplied)
The Comptroller alleges that the abovequoted portion of the General Appropriations Act purports to transfer to the Department of General Services the supervision and control of the personnel and data processing equipment which are vital and absolutely necessary to the Comptroller for the complete exercise of his official constitutional duties of issuing orders and warrants and settling and approving accounts against the State as set forth in Fla.Const., art. IV, § 4(d) and (e), F.S.A. He seeks a writ of mandamus commanding the Secretary of State to expunge from the 'official acts of the legislative department' those parts of the General Appropriations Act, Ch. 71--357, Laws of Florida, quoted above, purporting to transfer from the office of the Comptroller or the Department of Banking & Finance to the Department of General Services, personnel, salaries and other moneys, equipment, et cetera, of the office of the Comptroller or the Department of Banking & Finance. Respondents filed a motion to quash the alternative writ and also filed the returns to the alternative writ.
Under ordinary circumstances, this Court prefers that the constitutionality of a statute be considered first by a trial court. The case Sub judice, however, involves a provision in the General Appropriations Act of 1971 so that the functions of government will be adversely affected unless an immediate determination is made by this Court. Mandamus is a legal remedy which is not awarded as a matter of right, but in the exercise of sound judicial discretion. See 16 F.L.P., Mandamus, § 8.
A State officer is named as respondent in the petition and the Comptroller is entitled to interpose the question of the constitutionality of the portion of the Appropriations Act quoted above. The motion to quash is denied. Fla.Const., art. V, § 4(2); F.A.R. 4.5(b), 32 F.S.A.; 21 Fla.Jur., Mandamus, § 51.
We now proceed to the merits.
Fla.Const., art. III, § 12, provides as follows:
'Laws making appropriations for salaries of public officers and other current expenses of the state shall contain provisions on no other subject.'
We construed this provision of the Constitution in Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 239 So.2d 1 (Fla.1970), and said:
'That the Legislature does not have the power nor the right under the Constitution of this State to make law in an appropriations bill on other subjects, unless the other subjects are so relevant to, interwoven with, and interdependent upon, the appropriations so as to jointly constitute a complete legislative expression on the subject.' (p. 11)
In the Advisory Opinion to the Governor, Supra, we held that there was no constitutional impediment to an appropriation being made contingent upon the enactment of another law reasonably related to the appropriation and where there was direct and relative interdependence between them. However, we pointed out that the appropriation may not be made to depend upon entirely unrelated events. In its opinion, this Court said:
(p. 11)
It should be specifically noted that the General Appropriations Act of 1971 was upheld as against a General attack. In the case Sub judice, a specific item is attacked, not on the ground that the appropriation is based upon the happening of a contingency, but on the ground that the appropriation also transfers certain duties of government from one department to another. There is no contingency expressed in the Act. Instead, there is an absolute transfer of the control and supervision of the data center from the Comptroller to the Department of General Services.
The title to Ch. 71--357, the General Appropriations Act, reads as follows:
'An Act making appropriations; providing moneys for the annual period beginning July 1, 1971, and ending June 30, 1972, to pay salaries, other expenses, capital outlay--buildings and improvements, and for other specified purposes of the various agencies of state government; providing an effective date.'
Fla.Const., art. III, § 6, contains the following provision:
'Every law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected therewith, and the subject shall be briefly expressed in the title.'
The aim and purpose of incorporating §§ 6 and 8, art. III, in the Constitution of Florida, may be summed up as follows:
First, to prevent hodgepodge or logrolling legislation;
Second, to prevent surprise or fraud upon the Legislature by means of including a provision in a bill of which the title gives no intimation and which might therefore be overlooked and carelessly and unintentionally adopted; and
Third, to fairly apprise the people, through such publication of legislative proceedings as is usually made, of the suggestions of legislation that are being considered, in order that they may have opportunity of being heard thereon if they shall so desire. See State ex rel. Attorney General v. Green, 36 Fla. 154, 18 So. 334 (1895).
Provisions identical with Fla.Const., art. III, § 12 (1968), were included in the Constitution of 1885. In discussing this provision in Lee v. Dowda, 155 Fla. 68, 19 So.2d 570 (1944), this Court said:
'It is manifest that the Constitution considered this matter of appropriation laws so important that it required they should be freed from all log rolling, by putting into such bills riders dealing with any other subject whatsoever, so that the attention of the Legislature should be concentrated upon the wisdom of and the necessity for the several items of appropriations made by and enumerated in the bill, and so also that the public could rest assured that when an appropriation bill was up for consideration in the Legislature nothing would be considered but the appropriations, and that this important matter should not be prejudiced by the injection into the appropriation bill of any other matters, regardless of their inherent merits or demerits.' (p. 571)
The obvious purpose of that portion of § 2, Ch. 71--357, quoted and emphasized above, was to transfer certain duties previously exercised by the Comptroller to the Division of Electronic Data Processing of the Department of General Services. See Fla.Stat. §...
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