People ex rel. Nelson v. Olympic Hotel Bldg. Corp.

• Decision Date: 22 March 1950
• Docket Number: No. 31038,31038
• Citation: 405 Ill. 440,91 N.E.2d 597
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. NELSON, County Collector v. OLYMPIC HOTEL BLDG. CORPORATION.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 597

91 N.E.2d 597

405 Ill. 440

PEOPLE ex rel. NELSON, County Collector v. OLYMPIC HOTEL BLDG. CORPORATION.

No. 31038.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

March 22, 1950.

Adelbert Brown, of Chicago, for appellant.

John S. Boyle, State's Attorney, Chicago (Gordon B. Nash, Melvin F. Wingersky, and Joseph H. O'Connor, all of Chicago, of counsel), for appellee.

THOMPSON, Chief Justice.

Appellant, Olympic Hotel Building Corporation, filed objections to the Cook County collector's application for judgment and order of sale of real estate, delinquent for nonpayment of taxes for the year 1945. The county court overruled four separate and distinct objections and, from the judgment entered, an appeal has been taken directly to this court, the question of revenue being involved. The objections pertained to the corporate fund, bond and interest fund, highway fund and county employees annuity and benefit fund, as levied by the County of Cook for the year 1945, taxes being paid in full under protest.

It is stipulated that the county collector duly made a prima facie case; that the objector is the owner of the parcel of real estate described in the objections, which real estate is located within the boundaries of Cook County. The issues on appeal are restricted to the objections filed to each of the four separate levies.

The objection to the corporate fund levy goes to the amount in excess of the 'pegged' limit of $8,500,000 set by act of the legislature through House Bill 618. (Laws of 1943, p. 558; Ill.Rev.Stat.1943, chap. 34, par. 25.) Section 25 of that act, having to do with the powers of the county board, provides in part as follows:

'The county board of the several counties shall have power: * * *

'Fifth. To cause to be levied and collected annually taxes for county purposes, including all purposes for which money may be raised by the county by taxation * * * in counties having 500,000 or more inhabitants * * * for the year 1945 at the rate of twenty-five (25) cents or at a rate which when extended will produce an amount not to exceed $8,500,000, whichever may be the greater, * * *.'

Prior to 1943 it had been the practice of the assessor of Cook County, over a long period of time, to debase the value of property to 37 per cent for assessment purposes. In November, 1943, he departed from the customary practice and assessed all property for taxation purposes on the basis of fair cash value or at 100 per cent of its value.

The objector contends that the act aforesaid prescribes one of two alternatives: (1) a rate limit of $.25 which must be read in the light of what it would produce under assessment practices that prevailed at the time the law was adopted, July 1943, or (2) a pegged levy of $8,500,000, whichever may be the greater.

The relator, on the other hand, takes the position that a rate may be used which when extended will produce an amount not to exceed the sum of $8,500,000, or that the rate of 25 cents may be used regardless of the assessed value or the amount it will produce, whichever method produces the greater amount. Under relator's position he may disregard the pegged amount and levy a much larger one at his option.

In determining the meaning of a grant of power to levy taxes, strict construction will be given to that which is relied upon to confer the power. People ex rel. McDonough v. Mills Novelty Co., 357 Ill. 285, 192 N.E. 236; People ex rel. Toman v. Chicago Heights Terminal Transfer Railroad Co., 375 Ill. 590, 32 N.E.2d 161; People ex rel. Dooley v. New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad Co., 371 Ill. 522, 21 N.E.2d 760.

A number of general rules of statutory construction are cited by both sides, which we have considered, but it will not be necessary to enumerate them here. A statute itself affords the best means of its exposition, and if the legislative intent can be ascertained from its provisions, that intent will prevail without resorting to other aids for construction. Burke v. Industrial Comm., 368 Ill. 554, 15 N.E.2d 305, 119 A.L.R. 1152; Coon v. Doss, 361 Ill. 515, 198 N.E. 341, 102 A.L.R. 561.

It is true there is no need of construction to ascertain the meaning of a statute where the language is clear and unambiguous and the intention of lawmaking power is manifestly apparent therefrom. Bergeson v. Mullinix, 399 Ill. 470, 78 N.E.2d 297; People v. Lund, 382 Ill. 213, 46 N.E.2d 929. However, it is a well-settled rule of statutory construction that, in construing statutes, the intention of the legislature will control and that the several provisions of the statute should be construed together in the light of the general purpose and object of the act, so as to give effect to the main intent and purpose of the legislature as therein expressed. People ex rel. Hutchcraft v. Louisville and Nashville Railroad Co., 396 Ill. 502, 72 N.E.2d 194; People ex rel. Curren v. Schommer, 392 Ill. 17, 63 N.E.2d 744, 167 A.L.R. 1347; People ex rel. Rice v. Wilson Oil Co., 364 Ill. 406, 4 N.E.2d 847, 107 A.L.R. 1500; People ex rel. Harding v. Goldberg, 332 Ill. 346, 163 N.E. 781; State Public Utilities Comm. v. Monarch Refrigerating Co., 267 Ill. 528, 108 N.E. 716, Ann.Cas.1916A, 528; People v. Price, 257 Ill. 587, 101 N.E. 196, Ann.Cas.1914A, 1154. The history of the legislation, considered with the objects to be accomplished and reading the entire section together, indicates its purpose. People ex rel. Hutchcraft v. Louisville and Nashville Railroad Co., 396 Ill. 502, 72 N.E.2d 194; Morris v. The Broadview, Inc., 385 Ill. 228, 52 N.E.2d 769.

Resort to explanatory legislative history has been declared not to be forbidden no matter how clear the words may first appear on superficial examination. Harrison v. Northern Trust Co., 317 U.S. 476, 63 S.Ct. 361, 87 L.Ed. 407. Historical facts and the significant circumstances leading up to the enactment of a statute may be noticed to show that a liberal interpretation of the words used is not the intended meaning. Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 12 S.Ct. 511, 36 L.Ed. 226. The elusiveness of legislative intent is not less than that of proximate cause and reasonable doubt, and the decisions of the many cases pertaining thereto present a maze of distinctions, contradictions and theories under different circumstances and situations which end in a morass of unintelligible precedents in their application.

Differentiating the principles as we find them from the record here, and taking into consideration the legislative history of the fifth paragraph of the act, as above pointed out, in connection with pertinent provisions of the statute relative to powers of the county board, it is our opinion that the rate limit of $.25 must be read in the light of what it would produce under assessment practices that prevailed at the time the law was adopted in July, 1943. The act must be read as limiting the amount of taxes that could be levied and collected for county purposes by Cook County for the year 1945 to whichever was the greater of either (1) the $.25 rate applied to an assessment debased to 37 per cent of full value, in accordance with the practice prevailing in July, 1943, when the act was amended, or (2) a rate applied to an assessment debased to 37 per cent of full value, which, when extended, would produce an amount not to exceed $8,500,000. Under the facts before us, the $.25 rate so applied would produce approximately $5,537,300, and the pegged levy would produce $8,500,000. The levy actually extended having exceeded the greater of those two amounts, it follows that the lower court was wrong in overruling the objections to the corporate fund levy. There would be merit to relator's contention if the legislature had amended the fifth paragraph of the above-quoted act after the change in assessment practice raising the assessment from 37 per cent to 100 per cent of full fair cash value, but that is not the case here. As pointed out, the trial court erred in overruling the objection to the corporate fund levy.

The second objection goes to the 1945 tax for the retirement of principal and interest of certain nonreferendum funding bonds issued by Cook County November 3, 1944, pursuant to a resolution of the commissioners. By that resolution the county also audited and allowed claims against it in the amount of $2,468,965.05 which the bonds were to discharge.

The appropriation and levy of said county for the fiscal year 1945 included $49,360 for interest and $309,000 for principal retirement of said bonds. It is argued this tax is invalid because the authority under which the bonds were issued (Ill.Rev.Stat.1943, chap. 34, par. 103w) was restricted to claims that were audited and allowed prior to December 1, 1942, whereas the funding bonds were issued for the payment of claims audited and allowed November 3, 1944, the same date that the bonds were authorized. The pertinent parts of the act in question are as follows:

'In all cases where any county having a population of 500,000 or more inhabitants has incurred indebtedness prior to December 1, 1942 for proper county purposes, such indebtedness being evidenced by claims that shall have been audited and allowed by the county board, or evidenced by judgments rendered prior to December 1, 1942 against such county, such county may issue negotiable coupon bonds in the amount of such unpaid claims or judgments, or both, for the purpose of paying same, and may levy taxes upon all the taxable property in such county sufficient to pay the principal of such bonds at maturity and to pay the interest thereon, as it falls due, within the constitutional limitation of 75 cents per $100 of valuation, without submitting the question of issuing such bonds and levying such taxes to a vote of the people of such county. * * * and such bonds shall be authorized by resolution adopted by the county board prescribing all details of issue and determining the amount of unpaid indebtedness incurred for...