Long v. Board of Sup'rs of Benton County

• Decision Date: 03 May 1966
• Docket Number: No. 52097,52097
• Citation: 142 N.W.2d 378,258 Iowa 1278
• Parties: Harry V. LONG, Appellant, v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF BENTON COUNTY, namely, Carl R. Luze, Oren C. Thompson, Jay W. Nabholz, and the Benton County Auditor, Homer M. Lockard, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 378

142 N.W.2d 378

258 Iowa 1278

Harry V. LONG, Appellant, v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF BENTON COUNTY, namely, Carl R. Luze, Oren C. Thompson, Jay W. Nabholz, and the Benton County Auditor, Homer M. Lockard, Appellees.

No. 52097.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 3, 1966.

C. E. Hutchins, Belle Plaine, Lawrence F. Scalise, Atty. Gen., and Timothy McCarthy, Sol. Gen. of Iowa, Des Moines, for appellant.

Bordewick, Fischer & Fischer, Vinton, for appellees.

LARSON, Justice.

This action in mandamus brought by a resident and taxpayer of Benton County, Iowa, under chapter 661, Code of Iowa 1962, to compel defendants Board of Supervisors and County Auditor of Benton County, Iowa to keep the county courthouse open for the transaction of business five and one-half (5 1/2) days per week, including Saturdays from 8 A.M. to 12 noon, excepting legal holidays, as provided in section 10, chapter 307, Laws of the Sixty-first General Assembly, was on motion dismissed by the trial court. It found inter alia that chapter 307, Laws of the Sixty-first General Assembly, was unconstitutional in part, that this Act embraced more than one subject and the subject matter therein was not adequately indicated in the title, in violation of Article III, Section 29, of the Iowa Constitution, and that, even if validly enacted, this section does not place an affirmative duty on the board and auditor to enforce its provisions so as to justify the action of mandamus. We cannot agree.

I. Chapter 307, Laws of the Sixty-first General Assembly, provides: 'AN ACT relating to the compensation of county officers, deputies and clerks.' Section 1 sets out the annual compensation of the county auditor, treasurer, recorder, and clerk of the district court computed according to table. Section 2 sets out the Duty of the board of supervisors to provide additional compensation to the county treasurer. Section 3 amends section 331.22, Code of Iowa 1962, relating to compensation of supervisors. Section 4 amends section 331.23, Code 1962, relating to maximum session pay of supervisors. Section 5 makes it the Duty of the board to fix future salaries of officers in conformity with the schedule and census reports. Section 6 provides for the salary of deputies and makes it the Duty of the board to certify salaries to the auditor. Section 7 authorizes county treasurers to appoint a deputy collector of taxes and sets the salary of the deputy. Section 8 repeals sections 340.1, 340.2, 340.3, 340.5, 340.8, and 340.11, of the 1962 Code relating to salaries of county officers. Section 9 amends section 338.1 relating to compensation of sheriffs for care of prisoners. Section 10 provides: 'It is hereby declared to be the policy of this state that all courthouses shall be open for the transaction of business five and one-half (5 1/2) days per week. Such period shall include Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 12 noon, excepting legal holidays.'

Defendants maintained that the title and the first nine sections of chapter 307 concern only the subject of compensation, referred to in the designated chapters of the code, while section 10 deals only with duties of management of courthouses, referred to in chapters 332 and 333 of the code, and that they are and were intended to be wholly separate and distinct subjects unrelated to and not connected with each other.

Plaintiff's position, stated simply, is that the subject of compensation includes, and was intended to include, duties to be performed by the said officers, that the duty provided in section 10 placed on the board and county auditor an additional duty reasonably related and germane to the term 'compensation' as used in this act.

Article III, section 29, of the State Constitution, provides: 'Every act shall embrace but one subject, and matters properly connected therewith; which subject shall be expressed in the title. * * *.'

Controversy has often arisen as to the proper application of this provision. In Volume 8, No. 1, Drake Law Review, the author of an article on constitutional form of a bill, states there have been about ninety such cases involving this point before our court and, in all but nine, statutes have been held valid. As a result of these opinions, we have some rather definite and specific guides to aid in determining such questions.

II. It has been uniformly held that section 29, Article III, of the Iowa Constitution, should be liberally construed so one act may embrace all matters reasonably connected with the subject expressed in the title and not utterly incongruous thereto. Independent School Dist. of Cedar Rapids v. Iowa Empl. Sec. Comm., 237 Iowa 1301, 1313, 25 N.W.2d 491, and citations; State of Iowa ex rel. Weir v. County Judge of Davis County, 2 Iowa (Cole) 280; Carlton v. Grimes, 237 Iowa 912, 944, 23 N.W.2d 883; Beaner v. Lucas, 138 Iowa 215, 112 N.W. 772, and citations; 50 Am.Jur., Statutes, § 187 and § 209. In Weir we recognized the intent of section 29 and stated it was 'the duty of the courts to give such a construction to an act, if possible, as will avoid * * * (a declaration of unconstitutionality) and uphold the law.' In Beaner we referred to Johnson v. Harrison, 47 Minn. 575, 50 N.W. 923, where the purpose of such a section was discussed. The court there said that while the provision is mandatory, yet it is to be given a liberal, not a strict, construction. It was to prevent so-called 'log-rolling' legislation, and was not intended to embarrass legislation or hamper the legislature. It was pointed out in these cases that to constitute duplicity of subject, an act must embrace two or more dissimilar and discordant subjects that by no fair intendment can be considered as having any legitimate connection with or relation to each other. All that is necessary is that the act should embrace some one general subject, and by that is meant, merely, that all matters treated therein should fall under some one general idea and be so connected with or related to each other, either logically or in popular understanding, as to be part of or germane to one general subject.

Speaking on this subject, in Burlington and Summit Apts. v. Manolato, 233 Iowa 15, 18, 7 N.W.2d 26, 28, 144 A.L.R. 251, we said: 'Legislation will not be held unconstitutional unless clearly, plainly and palpably so. If the constitutionality of an act is merely doubtful or fairly debatable, the courts will not interfere.' In the landmark case of State v. Talerico, 227 Iowa 1315, 1322, 290 N.W. 660, 663, we said this constitutional provision was designed to prevent surprise in legislation, to prevent the union in one bill of matters having no fair relation to each other. 'It is sufficient if all the provisions relate to the one subject indicated in the title and are parts of it or incidental to it or reasonably connected with it or in some reasonable sense auxiliary to the subject of the statute. It it unnecessary that each thought or step toward the accomplishment of an end or object should be embodied in a separate act. Nor is it important that a law contain matters which might be and usually are contained in separate acts or would be more logically classified as belonging to different subjects provided only they are germane to the general subject of the act in which they are put.' (Emphasis supplied.) Also see Miller v. Schuster, 227 Iowa 1005, 1014, 1015, 289 N.W. 702, 707, where it was said: 'It is only in extreme cases, where unconstitutionality appears beyond a reasonable doubt, that this court can or should act, unless we are to depart from fundamental and well established principles of construction, which we are convinced are sound and should be adhered to.'

The primary and universally-recognized purpose of the one-subject rule is to prevent 'log-rolling' in the enactment of laws, the practice of several minorities combining their several proposals as different provisions of a single bill, and thus consolidating their votes so that a majority is obtained for the omnibus bill where perhaps no single proposal of each minority could have obtained majority approval separately. It was designed to prevent riders from being attached to bills that are popular and so certain of adoption that the riders will secure adoption, not on their own merits, but on the merits of the measure to which they are attached.

Another purpose served by the one-subject rule is to facilitate orderly legislative procedure. By limiting each bill to a single subject, the issues presented by each bill can be better grasped and more intelligently discussed by legislators. Also, limiting each bill to one subject means that extraneous matters may not be introduced into consideration of the bill by proposing amendments not germane to the subject under consideration. See 42 Minnesota Law Review 391.

Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a particular statute deals with only one subject, but, as we have seen, considerable liberality is indulged in defining the scope of the term 'subject'. While it is recognized there are numerous subjects of legislation and only one of these may be embraced in any one act, the provisions involved in one act may be multifarious. Thus, it is the general rule that all matters, however diverse they may be, which have a logical or natural connection with or are germane to the general subject, may properly be included in one statute. See Statutory Construction, by Crawford, § 98, p. 138; Johnson v. Harrison, supra, 47 Minn. 575, 50 N.W. 923; Allen v. State, 129 Neb. 722, 262 N.W. 675; City of Owensboro v. Hazel, 229 Ky. 752, 17 S.W.2d 1031; State v. Allen, 152 Or. 422, 53 P.2d 1054. In the Nebraska case it was said the 'subject' of an act is the matter or thing which forms the ground work thereof, any may include many parts or things so long as they are germane to it and are such that, if traced back, will lead the mind to the subject as the generic lead.

III. 'Compensation', as used in the title to this chapter, implies...