People ex rel. Metro. St. Ry. Co. v. State Bd. of Tax Com'rs

• Decision Date: 28 April 1903
• Citation: 174 N.Y. 417,67 N.E. 69
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. METROPOLITAN ST. RY. CO. v. STATE BOARD OF TAX COM'RS. PEOPLE ex rel. TWENTY-THIRD ST. RY. CO. v. SAME. PEOPLE ex rel. CENTRAL CROSS-TOWN R. CO. v. SAME. PEOPLE ex rel. CONSOLIDATED GAS CO. OF NEW YORK v. SAME. PEOPLE ex rel. BROOKLYN CITY R. CO. v. SAME. PEOPLE ex rel. CONEY ISLAND & B. R. CO. v. SAME. PEOPLE ex rel. NEW AMSTERDAM GAS CO. v. SAME.

174 N.Y. 417

67 N.E. 69

PEOPLE ex rel. METROPOLITAN ST. RY. CO.

v.STATE BOARD OF TAX COM'RS.

PEOPLE ex rel. TWENTY-THIRD ST. RY. CO.

v.SAME.

PEOPLE ex rel. CENTRAL CROSS-TOWN R. CO.

v.SAME.

PEOPLE ex rel. CONSOLIDATED GAS CO. OF NEW YORK

v.SAME.

PEOPLE ex rel. BROOKLYN CITY R. CO.

v.SAME.

PEOPLE ex rel. CONEY ISLAND & B. R. CO.

v.SAME.

PEOPLE ex rel. NEW AMSTERDAM GAS CO.

v.SAME.

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 28, 1903.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department.

Separate proceedings by the people, on the relation of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, of the Twenty-Third Street Railway Company, of the Central Cross-Town Railroad Company, of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, of the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, of the Coney Island & Brooklyn Railroad Company, and of the New Amsterdam Gas Company, against the State Board of Tax Commissioners. From orders of the Appellate Division (80 N. Y. Supp. 85, 1145) reversing an order of the Special Term reducing, and confirming as reduced, an assessment on the special franchises of the respective relators, they appeal. Reversed.

The assessments in question were made in the year 1900, pursuant to the provisions of the tax law (Laws 1896, p. 795, c. 908), as amended by chapter 712, p. 1589, of the Laws of 1899. Separate writs of certiorari, granted to review the respective assessments, resulted in an order in each proceeding appointing a referee to take and report to the Supreme Court such evidence upon the several issues raised by the petition, writ, and return as might be adduced before him by the parties, with his findings of fact and conclusions of law thereon. After taking many pages of evidence, the referee made separate and complete findings of fact appropriate to each proceeding, and, as conclusions of law in each, found ‘that chapter 712, p. 1589, of the Laws of 1899, is a valid and constitutional enactment, practicable and operative, and that it gave authority to the defendants to assess the relator's special franchises for the purpose of assessment and taxation; that the relator had a hearing and due process of law before the defendants upon the review of its assessment, * * * and was not deprived of any of its legal or constitutional rights; that it was lawful to assess as one franchise the franchise, right, authority, or permission which the relator had in the streets of New York, and which it operated as one system; that, to equalize its assessment with the assessment of other real property in the city of New York, the relator is entitled to a deduction,’ the amount being named in each proceeding; ‘and that the assessment, as thus reduced, must be taken as the value of the relator's special franchise for the purposes of assessment and taxation under the act.’

The Supreme Court adopted the findings both of fact and law made by the referee, and directed that final orders be entered in accordance therewith. From the order so entered in each proceeding the relator therein appealed to the Appellate Division, which affirmed as to the facts but reversed as to the law, upon the ground that the statute in question was in violation of the ‘home rule’ provision of the Constitution. Two of the justices dissented. The State Board of Tax Commissioners appealed to this court from the several orders entered accordingly.John Cunneen, Atty. Gen. (William H. Wood, of counsel), for appellant.

Charles F. Brown, David B. Hill, Frank H. Platt, and William H. Page, Jr., for respondent Metropolitan St. Ry. Co.

William H. Page, Jr., and David B. Hill, for respondents Twenty-Third St. R. Co. and others.

Frank H. Platt and David B. Hill, for respondent Consolidated Gas Co. of New York.

Charles A. Collin, William F. Sheehan, John L. Wells, Thomas L. Hughes, Charles H. Werner, David B. Hill, and Charles v. Nellany, for respondent Brooklyn City R. Co.

William N. Dykman and David B. Hill for respondent Coney Island & Brooklyn R. Co.

John C. Tomlinson, David B. Hill, and Edgar J. Kohler, for respondent New Amsterdam Gas Co.

VANN, J.

These appeals were argued together, and the questions of law presented are common to all the proceedings. The only questions peculiar to any case were questions of fact, which have been finally disposed of by the concurrent action of the courts below, as they united in adopting the facts as found by the referee. The main discussion at our bar, as well as in the four opinions written in the Appellate Division, related to the question whether the statute under which the assessments were made violates that part of the Constitution which provides for home rule in certain political divisions of the state. In order to answer this question, it will be useful to inquire: (1) What does the Constitution prohibit? (2) What does the statute command? And (3) what have the courts held as to the validity of other statutes relating to similar subjects?

The principle of home rule, or the right of selt-government as to local affairs, existed before we had a constitution. Even prior to Magna Charta, some cities, boroughs, and towns had various customs and liberties, which had been granted by the crown, or had subsisted through long user, and among them was the right to elect certain local officers from their own citizens, and, with some restrictions, to manage their own purely local affairs. These customs and liberties, with other rights, had been so often trampled upon by the King as to arouse deep hatred of centralization of power; and we find among the many grants of the Great Charter that ‘the city of London shall have all its ancient liberties and its free customs as well by land as by water. Furthermore, we will and grant that all other cities and burghs and towns * * * shall have all their liberties and free customs.’ Cap. 13. ‘All evil customs * * * shall immediately be enquired into by twelve knights of the same county, upon oath, who shall be elected by good men of the same county,’ and after inquisition made ‘they shall be altogether destroyed by them, never to be restored, provided this be notified to us before it is done.’ Cap. 48. After this marvelous statute, rights, which before had rested largely on custom, rested on law, with a guaranty against violation by the amazing covenant of King John that, if he refused redress for an ‘excess committed,’ his subjects should be released from their allegiance, and at liberty to make war upon him, ‘saving harmless our person and the persons of our Queen and children and when it hath been redressed they shall obey us as they have done before.’ Cap. 61.

The rights thus secured after a long struggle and by great pressure, although at times denied and violated by the ruling monarch, were never lost, but were brought over by the colonists the same as they brought the right to breathe, and they would have parted with the one as soon as the other. The liberties and customs of localities reappear on a novel and wider basis in the town meetings of New England and the various colonies, including the colony of New York. The right of the inhabitants of townships had manors to meet at stated times in public town meetings, elect town officers, and transact town business, was well established while we were a colony, and was recognized by different statutes enacted by the Governor, Council, and General Assembly. Van Schaack's Laws, cc. 1201, 1224, 1419, 1448, 1454, 1459, 1460, 1499, 1536, 1562; Livingston & Smith's Laws, cc. 43, 654.

The business transacted at the town meeting related to highways, care of the poor, and matters of purely local concern. It was confined to the affairs of a small district, and was clearly separated from public matters of interest to the colony at large. The officers elected, generally by viva voce vote, were supervisors, assessors, collectors, constables, commissioners of highways, and overseers of the poor. The powers and duties of these officers were regulated by statute, but the right to select them resided in the people of the locality, and was stubbornly insisted upon as inviolable.

Such was the state of affairs when the first Constitution was adopted. While that instrument organized the state, it granted no rights to the people, but was their own creation, expressing the restraints that they desired to place upon themselves by preserving certain principles and methods of government which they wished to remain unalterable. Thus the Constitution of 1777 recognized local self-government as already existing, and continued and protected it, so that it could not lawfully be departed from without changing the Constitution itself. It provided that ‘town clerks, supervisors, assessors, constables and collectors and all other officers heretofore eligible by the people, shall always continue to be so eligible.’ Section 29. Sheriffs, coroners, loan officers, county treasurers, clerks of supervisors, and justices of the peace were to be appointed. Sections 26, 29. Thus our earliest Constitution did not create the right to elect the administrative officers of towns, but continued it as it had existed during the history of the colony while it was under the dominion of the English crown. The only local officers mentioned by name as ‘eligible by the people’ were town officers, and in fact almost all officers of other local divisions were appointed by central authority.

The second Constitution, framed in 1821, continued the right by the general clause, applicable to county, town, city, and village officers, that ‘all officers heretofore elected by the people shall continue to be elected; and all other officers, whose appointment is not provided for by this constitution, and all officers whose offices may be hereafter created by law, shall be elected by the people, or appointed, as may by law be directed.’ Article 4, § 15. Sheriffs, coroners, and some other county officers were for the first time made elective.

The third Constitution, drafted in 1846, continued the principle...