People ex rel. Stuckart v. Day

• Decision Date: 17 April 1917
• Docket Number: No. 11135.,11135.
• Citation: 277 Ill. 543,115 N.E. 732
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. STUCKART, County Collector, v. DAY.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

277 Ill. 543

115 N.E. 732

PEOPLE ex rel. STUCKART, County Collector,

v.DAY.

No. 11135.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Feb. 21, 1917.

Rehearing Denied April 6, 1917.

Petition for Rehearing on Modifications Denied April 17, 1917.

Appeal from Cook County Court; John H. Williams, Judge.

Proceedings by the People, on the relation of Henry Stuckart, County Collector, against Mark L. Day. From a judgment for taxes, defendant appeals. Affirmed in part, and in part reversed and remanded.Church, Shepard & Day, of Chicago (Frank L. Shepard, of Chicago, of counsel), for appellant.

Maclay Hoyne, State's Atty., of Chicago (Charles Center Case, Jr., Felsenthal & Wilson, William F. Struckmann, Edmund D. Adcock, Ross C. Hall, Walter E. Beebe, Samuel A. Ettelson, Leon Hornstein, and Joseph F. Grossman, all of Chicago, of counsel), for appellee.

CARTWRIGHT, J.

The appellant, Mark L. Day, a taxpayer of Cook county, city of Chicago and the Sanitary District of Chicago, paid the taxes levied upon his property for the year 1915 except the county tax, the Sanitary District tax, the forest preserve tax, and 12 cents on each $100 of the assessed value of his property levied by the city of Chicago, and the county collector applied to the county court of Cook county for judgment and order of sale for the unpaid taxes. Objections were filed by the appellant, and the county court sustained objections to the forest preserve district tax and that part of the county tax levied for parents' pension fund and refused judgment for those taxes, but overruled all other objections, and entered judgment accordingly, with an order of sale to satisfy the same.

[1] An objection to the county tax, so far as it was based on the annual appropriation bill, was that the appropriation bill was not published as required by law. [277 Ill. 546]Paragraph 6 of section 61 of the statute relating to the government of Cook county by a board of county commissioners (Laws 1905, p. 135) contains the following provisions:

‘Said board of commissioners shall, within the first quarter of each fiscal year, adopt a resolution, to be termed the annual appropriation bill, in and by which resolution said board shall appropriate such sums of money as may be necessary to defray all necessary expenses and liabilities of said Cook county, to be by said county paid or incurred during and until the time of the adoption of the next annual appropriation bill under this section. * * * Said appropriation bill shall specify the several objects and purposes for which such appropriations are made, and the amount appropriated for each object or purpose. * * * Such appropriation bill shall not take effect until after it shall have been once published in a newspaper published in Chicago, and said board shall provide for and cause said appropriation bill to be published as aforesaid.’

On February 26, 1915, the board of commissioners of Cook county adopted the annunal appropriation bill for that year, in which were specified the several objects and purposes for which appropriations were made and the amount appropriated for each object or purpose. On March 3, 1915, the board caused the appropriation bill to be published in the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a newspaper published in the German language in the city of Chicago, having a morning edition under the name of Morgenblatt, and an evening edition under the name of Chicago Freie Presse, and the appropriation bill was not otherwise published. The paper had a circulation of about 48,000, and the appropriation bill was printed in English in the German paper. A copy of the issue in which the publication was made was admitted in evidence, and by agreement a photographic copy, of the actual size of the paper, has been substituted and is a part of the record. The information usually contained in a newspaper, the news received from the AssociatedPress or furnished by correspondents, and news items gathered by local reporters, were in German. The news furnished by the Associated Press was translated from English into German and published in that language, and editorials were in the German language, but were sometimes afterward translated into English, and sometimes there were editorials published in English only. The circulation of such a paper was necessarily limited, in the main, to persons reading the German language, and that sort of publication is not a compliance with section 18 of the Schedule of the Constitution, nor with the statute providing for publication to furnish information to citizens generally. Perkins v. Commissioners of Cook County, 271 Ill. 449, 111 N. E. 580. On May 10, 1915, the county board adopted a resolution levying a tax based on the appropriation bill after deducting the estimated revenue from sources other than a tax levy. If the statutory provision is valid the appropriation bill was never in effect, and the tax based upon it was void. Riverside Co. v. Howell, 113 Ill. 256;People v. Florville, 207 Ill. 79, 69 N. E. 623;People v. McElroy, 248 Ill. 574, 94 N. E. 81;People v. Read, 256 Ill. 408, 100 N. E. 230, Ann. Cas. 1913E, 293;People v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co., 266 Ill. 150, 107 N. E. 322.

To meet the objection to the county tax it is argued that the requirement for the adoption of an annual appropriation bill is void because it is a local and special law regulating the affairs of Cook county, and is prohibited by section 22 of article 4 of the Constitution. The term ‘local,’ as applied to legislation, means such legislation as relates to a portion only of the state, while the word ‘special’ refers to such legislation as grants some special right, privilege, or immunity, or imposes some particular burden upon a portion of the people of the state. People v. Wilcox, 237 Ill. 421, 86 N. E. 672. It is argued that the requirement in question is both local and special, because: First, it provides for making known to the inhabitants of Cook county the objects and purposes for which appropriations are made by the county board and the amount appropriated for each object or purpose, thereby conferring upon the inhabitants of that county benefits and privileges not enjoyed by the inhabitants of other counties; second, it confers power of taxation to cause appropriation bills to be published, and thereby imposes on taxpayers of Cook county burdens not imposed on the taxpayers of other counties; third, it compels Cook county to resort to tax anticipation warrants and to taxation to meet heavy incidental expenses thereby occasioned while other counties are not so constrained; fourth, it is in conflict with section 9 of article 10 of the Constitution, because it deprives the circuit court of constitutional powers to determine the number of deputies and assistants of county officers; fifth, it is in conflict with section 12 of article 9, providing that when a county shall issue bonds it shall provide for a direct annual tax sufficient to pay the principal and interest as the bonds fall due, and therefore the levy for the payment of principal and interest on the bonds was valid; sixth, it confers special privileges upon the residents of Chicago to the exclusion of the residents of Cook county outside of Chicago by requiring publication in a newspaper in Chicago; seventh, it is contrary to section 22 of article 4, because it gives to publishers of newspapers in Chicago exclusive privileges to contract for the publication of the appropriation bill; eighth, it violates section 2 of article 2 of the Constitution, which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, affording like protection to the citizen.

This is a formidable array of alleged efforts of the General Assembly to undermine the Constitution and to break down its guaranties for the purpose of informing the taxpayers of Cook county for what purposes and objects the moneys to be exacted from them by taxation are to be expended and the amount to be devoted to each purpose. Some of the objections are intrinsically of little importance and substantially neutralize each other, one being that the statute imposes upon the taxpayers the unjust burden of bearing the cost of publication for the sake of the information, and another, perhaps as a counterbalance, that it gives to the taxpayers the privilege of information denied to taxpayers of other counties. Most of the objections, however, whether substantial or unsubstantial, may be disposed of on one general ground.

It is true that, except as modified by section 7 of article 10 of the Constitution, the General Assembly is prohibited from passing local or special laws regulating county affairs. Devine v. Commissioners of Cook County, 84 Ill. 590;Knopf v. People, 185 Ill. 20, 57 N. E. 22,76 Am. St. Rep. 17. That section provides for a different management of the county affairs of Cook county from any other county in the state, as follows:

‘The county affairs of Cook county shall be managed by a board of commissioners of fifteen persons, ten of whom shall be elected from the city of Chicago, and five from towns, outside of said city, in such manner as may be provided by law.’

If that section, in any sense or to any degree, authorizes a different regulation of the county affairs of Cook county from such regulation as to other counties, any statute enacted in pursuance of it would be valid. It does regulate county affairs to the extent of providing that the corporate powers shall be exercised by a county board instead of a board of supervisors, as in counties under township organization, to which class Cook county belongs.

It is argued that although the affairs of Cook county are to be managed by a board of commissioners they must be managed in precisely the same way as boards of supervisors manage the affairs of their counties, and that the words ‘in such manner as may be...