People ex rel. Lindheimer v. Schwitzer
| Decision Date | 21 October 1938 |
| Docket Number | 24662.,24620,Nos. 24565,s. 24565 |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
| Parties | PEOPLE ex rel. LINDHEIMER, County Collector, v. SCHWITZER. SAME v. W. S. & S. H. McCREA ESTATE. PEOPLE ex rel. GILL, County Collector, v. MENEFEE. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Three actions by the People, on the relation of Horace G. Lindheimer County Collector, against Richard H. Schweitzer, and against the W. S. & S. H. McCrea Estate, and on the relation of Joseph L. Gill, County Collector, against Florence E. Menefee for judgments and orders of sale for delinquent taxes for the year 1935, wherein objections were filed to the taxes extended by the City of Chicago. From judgments for the collector in the first two cases, objectors appeal, and from a judgment sustaining the objections in the third case, the collector appeals.
Judgments affirmed in the first two cases, and in the third case judgment reversed and cause remanded, with directions.
Robert N. Holt, Scott, MacLeish & Falk, and Adelbert Brown, all of Chicago (Richard C. Beckett, Robert S. Cushman, Pomeroy Sinnock, George P. Foster, Charles M. Haft, and Paul S. Davis, all of Chicago, of counsel), for appellants.
Thomas J. Courtney, State's Atty., and Barnet Hodes, Corp. Counsel, both of Chicago (Joseph F. Grossman, Norman N. Eiger, and J. Herzl Segal, all of Chicago, of counsel), for appellees.
The Cook county collector applied to the county court for judgment and order of sale for delinquent taxes for the year 1935 in two cases-one against Richard H. Schweitzer, the other against the W. S. and S. H. McCrea Estate. Objections filed in both cases to the taxes extended by the city of Chicago pursuant to supplemental appropriation and levy ordinances adopted in 1935 were overruled and judgment was then entered in each case in favor of the collector. In a third case against Florence E. Menefee, a similar objection was sustained by the court, along with an additional objection to the levy made by the city for the payment of refunding bonds. Appeals have been taken directly to this court by the objectors in the first two cases and by the county collector in the third, the we ordered the cases consolidated for hearing and decision because of the similarity of issues involved.
The city of Chicago passed its annual appropriation ordinance for the year 1935 on January 4 of that year. On January 22, it adopted its annual tax levy ordinance. The legislature, on July 12, 1935, adopted several statutes increasing the amounts which might be levied by the city of Chicago for various purposes and authorized the adoption of supplemental appropriation and levy ordinances. Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, chap. 24, § 123, (corporate purposes fund); chap. 24, § 697a, (judgment fund); Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, c. 24, § 542, Ill.Rev.Stat.1935, chap. 24, § 586, (municipal tuberculosis sanitarium fund); chap. 81, § 1, (library fund). On July 22, 1935, the city adopted a supplemental appropriation ordinance and on August 2, adopted its supplement levy ordinance. The pertinent provisions of the original and supplemental ordinances are summarized in the following table:
Issue is raised concerning the power of the legislature to provide lump sum instead of maximum rate limitations for cities with a population over 150,000. Because these statutes change existing methods of taxation and apply only to cities with a population greater than 150,000, they are alleged to be local and special laws, violating section 22 of article 4 of the constitution, Smith-Hurd Stats.Const. art. 4, § 22. We have frequently held that under this section ‘it is within the power of the Legislature to classify cities on the basis of population and enact laws applicable to each class, where there is a reasonable basis for the classification in view of the object and purposes to be accomplished by the legislation.’ People v. DeKalb & Great Western Railroad Co., 256 Ill. 290, 100 N.E. 242, 244. The fact that the city of Chicago is the only city now within the designated class is no objection if the act can be reasonably applied to any municipalities which may become subject to its provisions in the future. Hunt v. Rosenbaum Grain Corp., 355 Ill. 504, 189 N.E. 907. These statutes do not require or permit the city of Chicago or any other city, to which they may become applicable in the future, to automatically levy the permitted amounts, regardless of corporate necessities. It must be remembered that the power to levy taxes is also restricted to the actual and necessary expenses of government. The question thus is narrowed to an inquiry whether there is any valid reason for expressing tax limitations for cities of over 150,000 population in terms of maximum sums and those for other cities in terms of maximum rates.
It must be conceded, we believe, that the levy and collection of taxes in large urban centers present problems unlike those existing in other parts of the State. As we said in Mathews v. City of Chicago, 342 Ill. 120, 174 N.E. 35, 41, ‘the methods required for the collection, care, and disbursement of the comparatively small amounts required by the much smaller municipalities throughout the state would be entirely inefficient for the much larger amounts involved in these larger municipalities, and * * * the complex financial and business organization for the larger municipalities would be either impracticable or unnecessarily burdensome and expensive for the smaller,’ etc. The ‘Budget law’ applicable to cities over 150,000 (Ill.Rev.Stat.1937, chap. 24, § 102) requires the taxing authorities to estimate the assets available for appropriation and prohibits them from authorizing or making any expenditure in excess of the estimate of their available assets. By fixing maximum tax limits in terms of amounts of taxes that may validly be raised for various purposes, the legislature has enabled the taxing authorities to determine in advance whether the budget they propose to adopt will comply with the law. It may be true, as objectors urge, that a similar system would be desirable in all taxing units throughout the State, but there is no evidence in the record to show that the present system has broken down so completely elsewhere as it has in Chicago. In the absence of such evidence, it is a reasonable assumption that the legislature found the existing method of expressing tax limitations in terms of rates adequate elsewhere but inadequate in Chicago, at...
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