Petitioners for Deannexation v. City of Goodyear
| Decision Date | 23 March 1989 |
| Docket Number | CA-CIV,No. 1,1 |
| Citation | 160 Ariz. 467,773 P.2d 1026 |
| Parties | PETITIONERS FOR DEANNEXATION in re Petition for Deannexation from the City of Goodyear, Petitioners-Appellees, v. CITY OF GOODYEAR, a municipal corporation; Maricopa County, a political subdivision of the State of Arizona; Max McCully, an individual; Wanda Sanders, an individual; and Gail Piggett, an individual, Respondents-Appellants. 88-110. |
| Court | Arizona Court of Appeals |
The City of Goodyear (Goodyear) appeals from a judgment that permitted deannexation of a portion of Goodyear's city limits pursuant to 1986 Ariz.Sess.Laws ch. 45, § 4, 1986 Ariz.Sess.Laws ch. 414, § 1 (deannexation law). The sole issue we reach on appeal is whether the act giving rise to the deannexation is a "local or special" law and therefore unconstitutional.
In the 1970's and 1980's a spate of municipal annexations occurred in Arizona that appeared to have no relationship to legitimate municipal concerns. See Glick v. Town of Gilbert, 123 Ariz. 395, 599 P.2d 848 (App.1979). Glick indicated that some cities were engaging in "strip" annexation, that is, were artificially extending their boundaries to include potentially high value taxable areas, or to defend against the encroachment of equally aggressive neighboring municipalities. See also Report of Arizona State Legislative Joint Interim Meeting on Urban Growth Policy, Oct. 31, and 1985, Jan. 7, 1986; Maricopa and Pima Counties Neighborhood Position on Annexation Reform, Feb. 1, 1986. In response to these concerns, the Legislature in 1985 initially placed a statewide moratorium on all annexations. A.R.S. § 9-471.
The Legislature then undertook a comprehensive revision of the annexation laws, which made more stringent the statutory requirements for annexation. See A.R.S. § 9-471 (effective April 10, 1986). As part of this process, and in recognition of past abuses, the Legislature enacted a provision that would allow a portion of a previously annexed area to be "deannexed." Representative Denny stated, "the problems that the area of Litchfield Farms [the property under consideration here] has had with strip annexations by the cities of Avondale, Goodyear, Phoenix and Glendale," could be cured by a deannexation statute that "would provide an appeals process for the first time in the State of Arizona." Minutes of Meeting, House Committee on Counties and Municipalities, Feb. 6, 1986, at 2.
The original bill dealing with deannexation provided that:
A. The superior court shall order the deannexation of territory from a city or town and return the territory to the jurisdiction of the county if all of the following conditions are satisfied:
. . . . .
H.B. 2189, 37th Legis., 2d Reg.Sess. (1986). This bill, as introduced, had statewide application. The bill that was subsequently passed was significantly narrower in scope:
A. The superior court shall order the deannexation of territory from a city or town having a population of less than ten thousand persons according to the 1980 United States decennial census within a county having a population in excess of one million two hundred thousand persons according to the 1980 United States decennial census and return the territory to the jurisdiction of the county if all of the following conditions are satisfied:
. . . . .
(Emphasis added.) See Senate Committee Amendments to H.B. 2189, Mar. 21, 1986, at 3.
The bill, as passed and as signed by the Governor, limited its applicability to the population according to the 1980 census and only affected Maricopa County and the following thirteen cities within Maricopa County: Gilbert, Avondale, Guadalupe, Goodyear, Tolleson, Surprise, Wickenburg, El Mirage, Buckeye, Youngtown, Gila Bend, Carefree, and Cave Creek.
After being signed by the Governor, the act, in the same legislative session, was further amended to provide that deannexation was only applicable to cities or towns having a population of eleven thousand according to the last special United States census and that the petitions for deannexation be filed prior to September 1, 1987. See Conference Committee Amendments to H.B. 2217, May 5, 1986, at 1. The result of this amendment was to exclude only Gilbert from the list of cities affected by the law. Furthermore, because the law became effective on August 23, 1986, it was only applicable for a thirteen-month period. During this "window period" the residents of Goodyear sought deannexation.
Against this background Goodyear contends that the law under which petitioners sought deannexation is unconstitutional under Ariz. Const. art. IV, pt. 2, § 19, which provides in pertinent part:
No local or special laws shall be enacted in any of the following cases, that is to say:
. . . . .
20. When a general law can be made applicable.
The trial court upheld the constitutionality of the deannexation statute under the authority of Picture Rocks Fire District v. Pima County, 152 Ariz. 442, 733 P.2d 639 (App.1986).
As an initial matter citing Valley National Bank v. Glover, 62 Ariz. 538, 159 P.2d 292 (1945), petitioners contend that when a court is faced with a challenge under subsection 20 of Ariz. Const. art. IV, pt. 2, § 19 (), the Legislature is the sole judge of whether a general law could suffice. Glover in turn relied upon Fairfield v. Huntington, 23 Ariz. 528, 205 P. 814 (1922), in which the general attitudes of courts in the last century as to "special/local" law prohibitions was reflected. These courts historically viewed such provisions as advisory only, involving a matter of legislative discretion not subject to judicial review. See, e.g., State ex rel. Sanche v. Webb, 110 Ala. 214, 28 So. 462 (1896).
As one commentator stated:
It is important to remember the historical context in which the first state constitutions appeared. Contrary to the view prevailing today--that constitutional protections exist to be enforced by the courts--concepts of judicial review were in their infancy. In other words, judicial enforcement of bill of rights provisions was probably far from their framers' minds. Thus, in many ways these early provisions, sometimes referred to only as "principles of government," can be viewed as descriptive rather than normative.
Williams, Equality Guarantees in State Constitutional Law, 63 Tex.L.Rev. 1195, 1205 (1985) (footnotes omitted).
Despite this professed acquiesence in the legislative determination, both Glover and Fairfield evaluated the legislation in question to determine whether it had a valid legislative purpose. Moreover, the Glover/ Fairfield rationale has not been utilized by the Arizona Supreme Court in subsequent cases dealing with the applicability of this section of our constitution. Rather, the court has analyzed legislation to determine whether it passed constitutional muster, instead of abdicating that inquiry to vague concepts of "legislative discretion." We therefore undertake that analysis here.
At the outset, we must determine the standard for evaluating the constitutionality of an act under the provisions of Ariz. Const. art. IV, pt. 2, § 19. Petitioners contend that if the legislation is constitutional under an equal protection analysis, then it is constitutional under a special/local law analysis. This contention is based upon Picture Rocks Fire District v. Pima County.
In Picture Rocks, Division Two of this court was faced with legislation strikingly similar to that under consideration here: a law that permitted property owners in a county having more than 250,000 residents but less than one million residents, according to the 1980 U.S. Decennial Census, to withdraw from a fire district. By the express terms of that legislation, it could only apply to Pima County and only to fire districts that were formed or property annexed after January 1, 1977.
The court upheld the constitutionality of the legislation against an attack that it violated the "special/local" law prohibition, utilizing only an equal protection analysis. In doing so, it adopted for a special/local law problem the same equal protection analysis employed in Williamson v. Lee Optical, 348 U.S. 483, 75 S.Ct. 461, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955), and concluded that:
[T]he reform may take one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind. The legislature may select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting the others.
Picture Rocks, 152 Ariz. at 446, 733 P.2d at 643, quoting Williamson, 348 U.S. at 489, 75 S.Ct. at 465.
Having thus disposed of the narrow application of the legislation by approving a "piecemeal approach," the court then inquired "whether the classifications drawn by the legislature have a rational basis." Id. This analysis is perfectly acceptable if Ariz. Const. art. IV, pt. 2, § 19 (special law prohibitions) has exactly the same meaning as Ariz. Const. art. II, § 13 (equal protection provisions).
In our opinion, these provisions are not the same. Our constitutional framers did not confine themselves to an equal protection clause; they deliberately included a special law provision as well. Constitutional history indicates they did so for a reason. Fear of legislative favoritism had existed in Arizona since territorial days. By enacting the Harrison Act, 48 U.S.C. § 1471, 24 Stat. 170 (1886), Congress attempted to circumvent the...
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