People ex rel. Wies v. Bowman

• Decision Date: 08 December 1910
• Citation: 247 Ill. 276,93 N.E. 244
• Parties: PEOPLE ex ral. WIES, County Treasurer, v. BOWMAN.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

247 Ill. 276

93 N.E. 244

PEOPLE ex ral. WIES, County Treasurer,

v.BOWMAN.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Dec. 8, 1910.

Appeal from St. Clair County Court; Frank Perrin, Judge.

Action by the People, on the relation of John J. Wies, County Treasurer and Collector of Taxes, against Walter J. Bowman. From a judgment for delinquent taxes, defendant appeals. Affirmed.Turner & Holder, J. M. Freels, and Whitnel, Browning & Gillespie, for appellant.

F. J. Tecklenberg, State's Atty. (A. B. Davis, J. E. Hamlin, and Dan McGlynn, of counsel), for appellee.

DUNN, J.

This appeal is from a judgment recovered against the appellant's property for delinquent taxes levied by the East Side Levee & Sanitary District, claiming to be a municipal corporation organized under the act of May 17, 1907, entitled ‘An act to create sanitary districts in certain localities and to drain and protect the same from overflow for sanitary purposes.’ Hurd's Rev. St. 1909, p. 923.

It will not be necessary to mention in detail the numerous objections filed in the county court. Those urged here resolve themselves into an attack upon the existence of the East Side Levee & Sanitary District because, first, the act under which it purports to be organized was not passed in a constitutional manner by the Legislature; second, the act is unconstitutional; third, the proceedings by which the organization of the district is claimed to have been accomplished were so irregular that the county judge and the board of commissioners provided for by the act never obtained jurisdiction in the matter, the elections held were void, and no organization was or could be effected by those proceedings.

In regard to the last class of objections it may be said that they cannot be considered in a case of the character of this. If it be conceded that the act is valid, then the regularity of the proceedings by which the organization of a municipal corporation is attempted cannot be drawn in question in a proceeding to collect taxes levied by such corporation, even though the objection goes to the jurisdiction of the tribunal through whose agency the organization is effected. It is not controverted that a petition was presented to the county judge of St. Clair county to submit to a vote the question whether certain territory should be organized under the act in question as a sanitary district; that he called to his assistance a circuit judge and the county judge of Madison county; that the board thus constituted fixed the boundaries of the proposed district; that at an election called for the purpose a majority of votes was cast for the sanitary district; that trustees were elected at a later election, and that the East Side Levee & Sanitary District has ever since assumed to be lawfully incorporated, and has exercised the privileges and franchises of a municipal corporation. An attempt was thus made to follow each step required by the statute. Section 3 of the act provides that if a majority of the votes cast shall be in favor of the incorporation of the proposed sanitary district, the district shall thenceforth be deemed an organized sanitary district under the act. By these proceedings a corporation was professedly brought into existence with all the powers conferred by statute. There was a law authorizing the organization of a sanitary district. There was an attempted organization and a user of the franchises of such a district. There being thus an acting de facto corporation, it is clearly not admissible in this form of action to question the existence of the corporation or its authority to exercise the powers conferred by statute upon such corporations. Blake v. People, 109 Ill. 504;Trumbo v. People, 75 Ill. 561;People v. Newberry, 87 Ill. 41;Osborn v. People, 103 Ill. 224;People v. Dyer, 205 Ill. 575, 69 N. E. 70;People v. Pederson, 220 Ill. 554, 77 N. E. 251.

For the same reason that the regularity of the incorporation cannot be inquired into, the evidence in regard to the sanitary purposes of drainage district No. 1 and of the Outlet Sewer District of East St. Louis, and in regard to the sanitary conditions in and around the city of East St. Louis, was properly rejected. Such evidence merely went to the legality of the organization, and was incompetent for that reason.

The journal of the Senate of the Forty-Fifth General Assembly was produced in evidence for the purpose of showing that the act was not passed in the Senate in the manner required by the Constitution. The journal shows that the bill was read a third time, ‘and the question being, ‘Shall this bill pass?’ it was decided in the affirmative by the following vote: Yeas 34. The following voted in the affirmative,' followed by the names of 34 senators. The Constitution requires the vote upon the final passage of all bills to be by yeas and nays and to be entered upon the journal. The objection made is that the nay votes are not entered upon the journal, and it is not expressly stated that there were none. It is competent to go behind the printed statute book and the enrolled act and to show by the journal of either branch of the Legislature that the act was not passed in the mode prescribed by the Constitution. The journals of the Senate and House of Representatives must be accepted as containing a true record of the proceedings of those bodies. They must show on their face a compliance with every requirement of the Constitution, from the introduction of a bill until its final passage, or it will not become a law. The silence of the journal as to anything required to be shown is evidence of its nonexistence. Spangler v. Jacoby, 14 Ill. 297, 58 Am. Dec. 571;People v. Starne, 35 Ill. 121, 85 Am. Dec. 348;Ryan v. Lynch, 68 Ill. 160. If the journal fails to show anything which, if it had occurred, should have appeared on the journal, the failure of the journal to show it is evidence that it did not occur. If there had been any negative votes upon the passage of the bill in question they should have been recorded in the journal. The fact that none are recorded is evidence that there were none. The effect of the record in the journal is that the bill was passed by a vote of 34 yeas and no nays.

It is insisted that the act violates the constitutional requirement that no act shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in the title. It is said that the act includes the subjects of levees, drainage, the taking control of other drainage districts and the maintenance of a police force. All these subjects are dealt with in the act, but only in a manner subsidiary to the general purpose of the act, which is indicated by its title. The legislation is not incongruous but is reasonably connected with the subject mentioned in the title. An act may contain many provisions and details for the accomplishment of the legislative purpose, and if they legitimately tend to effectuate that object the act is not contrary to the constitutional provision. People v. McBride, 234 Ill. 146, 84 N. E. 865,123 Am. St. Rep. 82;Meul v. People, 198 Ill. 258, 64 N. E. 1106;Town of Manchester v. People, 178 Ill. 285, 52 N. E. 964. None of the objects mentioned can be said to be foreign to the purpose of providing for the public health and safety by the prevention of overflow, the inauguration of a general system of drainage for sanitary purposes, and making provision for the protection of the levees, ditches, and other improvements which might be constructed.

It is contended that the act has for its main purpose the drainage of lands; that the sanitary purposes are merely incidental; that the drainage designed by the act to be accomplished can only be done, under the Constitution, by special assessment, and that, since the act makes no provision for a special assessment, but provides only for the levy of a general tax, it is unconstitutional. The act purports, in its title, to authorize the creation of sanitary districts for sanitary purposes only. It provides for their organization only in contiguous territory within two counties, including two or more incorporated cities, and having a population of not less than 25,000, which is subject to overflow from a river or tributary thereof, and in which the maintenance of one or more levees for protection against overflow and a new or improved outlet for drainage will conduce to the preservation of the public health and safety. The necessity to the public health of protection against the after-effects of great floods under the circumstances indicatedis manifest, as well as the difficulty of obtaining the concert of action necessary to secure such protection. We may take notice that at the time this act was passed East St. Louis was a city whose population exceeded 50,000; that other cities existed within the boundaries of the East Side Levee & Sanitary District, and that the entire population, urban and rural, approached 100,000. We may also recognize the recurrent floods to which that territory has been subject, with the attendant dangers, and the necessity for protection against them, both in the city and country. That it was competent for the Legislature to authorize the formation of a municipal corporation to have charge of the work of devising, constructing, and maintaining a system of levees and drainage for the purpose of furnishing the protection needed is undeniable, and it is obvious that such a work is distinct from that of drainage for agricultural purposes.

It is further objected that if not a drainage act, subject to the provisions of section 31 of article 4 of the Constitution, the act is obnoxious to section 22 of article 4. That section prohibits the Legislature from passing local or special laws in certain enumerated cases. Counsel have not mentioned the particular prohibition which applies to this case, and we have not discovered it. The act, on its face, does not purport to be local or special. We do not decide, and have not considered, whether it is so...