Stackhouse v. Floyd
| Decision Date | 18 July 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 18534,18534 |
| Citation | 149 S.E.2d 437,248 S.C. 183 |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | M. S. STACKHOUSE, L. B. Hardaway, R. K. Wright, and Gilbert McNeil, Appellants, v. Laurens FLOYD, Gordon Lynn, Phil Brown, James K. Page, J. D. Ray, Jr., T. E.Finklea, and M. H. Cox, as Members of the County Board of Education of DillonCounty, Mrs. Elma M. Moody, as Auditor and J. B. Cole, as Treasurer of DillonCounty,South Carolina, Respondents. |
Willcox, Hardee, Houck, Palmer & O'Farrell, Florence, for appellant.
W. B. Hawkins, Dillon, Sinkler, Gibbs & Simons, Charleston, for respondent.
In this action plaintiffs-appellants, as freeholders and taxpayers of the County of Dillon, seek, on numerous grounds, to prevent Dillon County from issuing bonds for school purposes, authorized by Act No. 581 of the Acts of the General Assembly of South Carolina for 1965. The said Act was enacted following and pursuant to an amendment to Article X, Section 5 of the Constitution of South Carolina, which was proposed by joint resolution, approved February 26, 1964 (1964 Acts and Joint Resolutions, No. 1204, page 2767), and ratified by Act No. 25 of the Acts of the General Assembly on the 10th day of February, 1965.
We are satisfied that the decree of the circuit court, which will be reported herewith, soundly and correctly disposes of all questions raised by the appellants below and on this appeal.
Decree of Judge Spruill follows:
At issue here is the constitutionality of an Act enacted at the 1965 session of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds by Dillon County whose proceeds are to be allocated among the school districts of Dillon County on the basis of pupil enrollment.
Dillon County is divided into three school districts: Lake View School District No. 1, Dillon School District No. 2, and Latta School District No. 3; and each of these school districts is subject to the eight per cent debt limitation imposed by Article X, Section 5 of the South Carolina Constitution. At the 1965 session of the General Assembly a special constitutional amendment was ratified providing that Dillon County may incur bonded indebtedness for school purposes in an amount not exceeding 15 per cent of the assessed value of all taxable property in the County. A county and its school districts are separate entities and are separately subject to their respective constitutional debt limitations. Tindall v. Byars, 217 S.C. 1, 59 S.E.2d 337. The effect of the amendment was to provide for Dillon County itself a 15 per cent debt limitation in the case of bonds issued for school purposes, separate and distinct from the eight per cent debt limitation upon the respective school districts, and from the eight per cent county debt limitation for other purposes. Knight v. Allen, 234 S.C. 559, 109 S.E.2d 585.
Acting on the strength of this constitutional amendment, the General Assembly at its 1965 session enacted legislation bearing ratification number R--360, approved May 6, 1965, by which it undertook to empower Dillon County by the County Board of Education of Dillon County to issue general obligation bonds of Dillon County for school purposes up to the amount permitted by the said special constitutional amendment, and to allocate the proceeds from the sale of such bonds among the three school districts of Dillon County in proportion, to the nearest $1000, that the pupil enrollment of each school district, as of the beginning of the 1964--65 school year, bears to the total pupil enrollment in Dillon County. This legislation further provided that the net proceeds of the bonds, after being allocated among the three school districts of Dillon County on the basis above mentioned, should be expended upon the warrant or order of 'a majority of the trustees of the respective school districts, to provide for additional public school facilities for the three school districts of Dillon County * * *.'
The plaintiffs are freeholders and taxpayers of Dillon School District No. 2 of Dillon County, South Carolina, and bring this action on behalf of themselves and all other persons in Dillon County similarly situate. The defendants include the members of the County Board of Education of Dillon County and the Auditor and Treasurer of Dillon County. The plaintiffs attack the issuance of the proposed bonds and the laying of a tax therefor upon a number of grounds as more fully set forth in their amended complaint and question both the validity of the constitutional amendment above mentioned, and the constitutionality of the 1965 legislation authorizing the issuance of the bonds.
The defendants demurred on the grounds that it appears on the face of the amended complaint that it does not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. The parties prepared and submitted to each other prior to the hearing on the demurrer, and to this Court at the time of the hearing, extensive briefs setting forth their respective positions.
This case is a vigorously contested adversary proceeding rather than a 'test suit' instituted to determine the validity of the proposed bond issue, and the issues were fully argued before me on Friday, September 3, 1965.
The plaintiffs attack the validity of the Dillon County constitutional amendment. First, they contend that the question as proposed and ratified by the General Assembly varied materially from the question submitted to the voters at the 1964 general election and that, as a result of such variation, the amendment has not been validly adopted in accordance with the provisions of Article XVI of the South Carolina Constitution. Secondly, they contend that the election with regard to the amendment was fatally defective because of certain alleged irregularities including the failure to post the proposed amendment conspicuously at each voting precinct in Dillon County and in the other voting precincts within the State of South Carolina as required by Section 23--321 of the 1962 South Carolina Code of Laws.
The amendment was proposed, voted on and ratified in the following forms:
Proviso Proposed Amending the Constitution, Ratified February 26, 1964:
Provided that Dillon County may incur bonded indebtedness for school purposes in an amount not exceeding 15% Of the assessed value of all taxable property in the county, and such indebtedness shall not be considered in determining the aggregate debt limitation imposed by this section.
Proposed Amendment Submitted to Voters in General Election:
To permit Dillon County to incur bonded indebtedness for school purposes in an amount not exceeding 15% Of the assessed value of all taxable property within the county, And to exclude such indebtedness from limitation of aggregate indebtedness upon territory in the county (Emphasis added).
Amendment of Article X, Section 5, Ratified February 10, 1965, provided:
(T)hat Dillon County may incur bonded indebtedness for school purposes in an amount not exceeding fifteen per cent of the assessed value of all taxable property in the county, and such indebtedness shall not be considered in determining the aggregate debt limitation imposed by this section.
The plaintiffs contend that the amendment, as proposed and ratified, authorized Dillon County to incur bonded indebtedness for school purposes in an amount not exceeding 15 per cent of the assessed value of all taxable property in the county and further provides that such indebtedness shall not be considered in determining the 15 per cent aggregate debt limitation imposed by Article X, Section 5, upon Dillon County itself; and the amendment, as voted upon, provides that bonds issued thereunder should be excluded from the 15 per cent aggregate debt limitation 'upon any territory in the county.'
The language of the amendment as set forth in the proposing and ratifying resolutions has exactly the same meaning as the language in the question submitted to and approved by the voters. Indeed, the question was submitted in the form prescribed by the General Assembly in the proposing resolution itself. Furthermore, there would have been no need for the amendment to provide that indebtedness incurred thereunder should not be considered in determining the 15 per cent aggregate debt limitation imposed by Article X, Section 5, on Dillon County itself, because it has long been established that a county is not subject to the 15 per cent aggregate debt limitation. Elliott v. Heyward, 127 S.C. 468, 121 S.E. 257.
The meaning of the amendment both as proposed and as voted upon was clearly the same, to wit: that Dillon County school bonds issued pursuant thereto should not be taken into account in calculating the 15 per cent aggregate debt limitation applicable to any political subdivision within Dillon County. Otherwise the issuance of bonds to the extent permitted by the amendment could preclude the issuance of general obligation bonds by certain lesser political units of Dillon County.
There is no requirement that the amendment as set forth in the proposing resolution must appear on the ballot submitted to the voters. In the case of Ex Parte Tipton, 229 S.C. 471, 93 S.E.2d 640, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that the question on the ballot need not include the full text of the proposed amendment but that 'it is sufficient that it describe the amendment plainly, fairly, and in such words that the average voter may understand its character and purpose.' The question submitted here meets these requirements.
The plaintiffs contend that the failure to post the proposed amendment at each voting precinct as required by Section 23--321 of the 1962 South Carolina Code of Laws invalidated the election with regard to the amendment. The applicable principle is stated in 18 Am.Jur. Elections, Section 11, as follows:
In order to give effect to the will of the majority and to...
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