Logan County Educ. Ass'n v. Logan County Bd. of Educ.

• Decision Date: 21 December 1988
• Docket Number: No. 17698,17698
• Citation: 180 W.Va. 326,376 S.E.2d 340
• Court: West Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: , 52 Ed. Law Rep. 352 LOGAN COUNTY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Robert Lonker, President, Appellants, v. LOGAN COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION and Dr. Samuel P. Sentelle, Superintendent, Appellees.

Page 340

376 S.E.2d 340

180 W.Va. 326, 52 Ed. Law Rep. 352

LOGAN COUNTY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Robert Lonker President, Appellants, v. LOGAN COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION and Dr. Samuel P. Sentelle Superintendent, Appellees.

No. 17698.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Dec. 21, 1988.

Syllabus by the Court

1. W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8, when read in conjunction with W.Va.Code, 18-9B-7, makes it plain that this provision relates to a school budget which involves funding for less than a full employment or school term.

2. The provisions of W.Va.Code, 18A-4-5, which relate to reduction of local funds allocated for instructional salaries and used in supplementing the State mandated salaries, do not apply to a proposed pay raise which is not implemented.

3. W.Va.Code, 18-9B-6, precludes a county board from adopting a final budget until after the written approval of the board of finance has been received, and the levy estimate has been approved by the state tax commissioner as required by law.

4. Where the tax commissioner determines that a local board of education's levy estimates in its proposed budget are too high and requires the local board under W.Va.Code, 18-9B-6, to reduce its budget by that amount, the local board was authorized to rescind a general pay raise which was to be funded by such additional levy estimates.

5. " 'A "property interest" includes not only the traditional notions of real and personal property, but also extends to those benefits to which an individual may be deemed to have a legitimate claim of entitlement under existing rules or understandings.' Syllabus Point 3, Waite v. Civil Service Commission, W.Va. , 241 S.E.2d 164 (1977)." Syllabus Point 2, State ex rel. McLendon v. Morton, 162 W.Va. 431, 249 S.E.2d 919 (1978).

6. "Although a government employee may have a reasonable basis for understanding terms of his employment, those understandings cannot override state law that defines the terms of employment." Syllabus Point 2,Freeman v. Poling, 175 W.Va. 814, 338 S.E.2d 415 (1985).

Charles R. Garten, Cagle & Garten, Logan, William McGinley, WVEA, Charleston, for appellants.

Richard D. Owen, Joseph Goodwin, Goodwin & Goodwin, Charleston, for appellees.

MILLER, Justice:

This is an appeal by the plaintiffs below, the Logan County Education Association (Association), a professional organization representing employees of the Logan County Board of Education (County Board), and Robert Lonker, president of the Association and a teacher employed by the County Board. The Circuit Court of Logan County granted a partial summary judgment in favor of the defendant in a declaratory judgment action under W.Va.Code, 55-13-1, et seq., based upon a finding that the County Board had not violated the constitutional, statutory, or contractual rights of its professional employees by not implementing a previously approved salary increase.

I.

The facts are not in dispute. This case turns on the legal significance of the County Board's action on April 15, 1982, when it met to review a proposed budget for the operation of the public school system in Logan County for the 1982-83 school year. At the meeting, the County Board unanimously voted to grant a pay raise of approximately 7.5 percent for all school personnel, which amounted to approximately $1.1 million. However, the county superintendent placed the salary increase in the capital outlay line item in the proposed budget. There is no dispute that the amount of increase was based upon anticipated additional property tax revenues.

The reason county education officials believed additional tax revenues might be available was a ruling by the Circuit Court of Logan County in a case styled Killen v. Logan County Commission that had been instituted by the County Board and its president. The circuit court held that W.Va.Code, 18-9A-11, which allowed county assessors to value property at 50 to 100 percent of its appraised value, violated the constitutional guarantee of "equal and uniform taxation throughout the State," W.Va. Const. art. X, § 1. It then certified this constitutional question to this Court. This certified question was pending before this Court during the County Board's budgeting process.

On July 2, 1982, this Court issued its opinion upholding the circuit court in Killen v. Logan County Comm'n, 602 W.Va. 170, 295 S.E.2d 689, 42 A.L.R. 4th 627 (1982), declaring the statute unconstitutional, but holding that this ruling would not be retroactive. On July 9, 1982, within a week of the Killen decision, the State Board of School Finance (Board of Finance) ¹ ordered the County Board to revise its budget downward, to reflect a lower tax revenue estimate without the Killen increase for the 1982-83 school year. On July 22, 1982, the County Board passed a motion to amend the budget to reflect the lower revenue estimate. This had the effect of voiding the proposed pay raise.

The plaintiffs contended below, as they do here, that the County Board violated the provisions of two statutes. The first is W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8 (1967), set out in note 4, infra, which relates to the order in which budgetary items may be reduced. The second is W.Va.Code, 18A-4-5 (1969), set forth in pertinent part in note 6, infra, which provides that local salary supplements cannot be reduced except in certain circumstances. The plaintiffs also contend that the County Board breached its contract with its employees by failing to pay the salary increases. They claim that they have been denied due process of law because the salary supplement was eliminated without notice and a hearing. ² They characterize the salary supplement as a protected property interest.

The circuit court found that the County Board had never adopted a salary increase, reasoning that the budget approved did not contain any increases in the line item for salaries. Since the anticipated tax revenues were placed in a capital outlay line item, teacher salaries were never increased or decreased. The circuit court, therefore, concluded that teacher salaries had not been reduced in violation of either W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8, or W.Va.Code, 18A-4-5.

The circuit court also found that the failure to implement the salary increase did not constitute a breach of contract, noting that the County Board had fulfilled its contractual obligation by paying the same salary level for the 1982-83 school year as it had paid in the previous year. Finally, the circuit court found no merit in the contention that the plaintiffs had a protected property interest in receiving a pay increase. The court determined that the plaintiffs had nothing more than a mere expectation of receiving a pay increase, which was subject to the contingency that the county would receive increased tax revenues as a result of the Killen decision.

II.

We agree with the circuit court's determination that the County Board did not violate the provisions of W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8, but we reach this conclusion based upon the language of the statutes, rather than the theory adopted by the circuit court. The trial court did not have the benefit of our decision in Summers County Educ. Ass'n v. Summers County Bd. of Educ., 179 W.Va. 107, 365 S.E.2d 387 (1987), which involved a situation similar to the present case involving W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8, in which we held that this statute applied to a situation where the county board's budget did not cover a full school year. ³ There, the county board of education had passed a budget eliminating the payment of local salary supplements which previously had been funded by a five-year excess levy. This action was taken after the voters in the county had voted down on several occasions a referendum for a new five-year excess levy.

In Summers County, we rejected the contention that the salary supplement should be reinstated because the county board did not follow the requirements of W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8. We pointed out that this statute, when read in conjunction with W.Va.Code, 18-9B-7, ⁴ made it plain that this provision relates to a school budget which involves funding for less than a full employment or school term:

"This provision addresses a situation in which a school board prepares a budget that contemplates cutting work days from the full school schedule. Specifically, § 18-9B-8 does not apply unless 'the Board of Finance finds that the proposed budget for a county will not maintain the schools for the employment term.'

"The Summers County Board of Education did not submit a budget based on a reduced employment term, and the Board of Finance accordingly did not make the kind of finding that would invoke the provisions of § 18-9B-8."

Under Summers County, the County Board in this case did not violate the provisions of W.Va.Code, 18-9B-8. This is not a case in which the County Board approved a budget providing for less than a full employment term. We, therefore, conclude that the plaintiffs' argument on this issue is not meritorious.

III.

We also find that the County Board did not violate W.Va.Code, 18A-4-5, relating to local funds for supplementing instructional salaries. ⁵ We have applied this statute on two occasions. In Summers County, we upheld the trial court's finding that the county board had been "forced to" eliminate the payment of local funds to supplement the State minimum salaries "by [the] failure of a special levy" and, thus, had not violated W.Va.Code, 18A-4-5. We also rejected the association's contention that the discontinuance of the salary supplements was arbitrary and capricious because excess funds were available to pay the salary supplements.

The other occasion we considered this statutory provision was in Newcome v. Board of Educ. of Tucker County, 164 W.Va. 1, 260 S.E.2d 462 (1979), where the county board had eliminated a $500 local salary supplement because of lack of property tax revenues. We affirmed the denial of a writ of mandamus to require inclusion of the salary supplement in the budget,...