State ex rel. Macy v. BD. OF COM'RS

• Decision Date: 01 June 1999
• Docket Number: No. 89,496.,89,496.
• Citation: 986 P.2d 1130,1999 OK 53
• Parties: STATE of Oklahoma, ex rel. Robert H. MACY, District Attorney for the Seventh Prosecutorial District, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. The BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF OKLAHOMA, State of Oklahoma, Defendant/Appellant.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

986 P.2d 1130

1999 OK 53

STATE of Oklahoma, ex rel. Robert H. MACY, District Attorney for the Seventh Prosecutorial District, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. The BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF OKLAHOMA, State of Oklahoma, Defendant/Appellant.

No. 89,496.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

June 1, 1999.

Alan E. Synar, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for the Appellant.

Robert H. Macy and Robert L. Mitchell, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for the Appellee.

OPALA, J.

¶ 1 The dispositive issues on appeal are: [1] Were the actions taken by the Board of County Commissioners of Oklahoma County [commissioners] effective to change the county's 1996-1997 fiscal-year budget (a) through the June 24, 1996 resolution disapproving a salary supplement for the district attorney (and his assistants) or (b) through the January 21, 1997 resolution that confined claims for the budgeted salary supplement to only the first half of the fiscal year? and [2] Is a county-funded salary supplement for the district attorney — initially authorized by the terms of 19 O.S.Supp.1996 § 215.30¹ and later implemented before the district attorney's term of office had begun — rendered invalid by Art. 23 § 10, Okl. Const.'s² prohibition against an elected official's salary change during the term of office. We answer all these questions in the negative. In sum, the invoked commissioners' actions were ineffective and the cited provision of the constitution does not affect legislatively authorized county salary supplement.

I THE ANATOMY OF LITIGATION

¶ 2 This is a controversy between Robert Macy, District Attorney of Oklahoma County [DA or Macy], and the county commissioners over the latter's refusal to approve payment of the DA's budgeted salary supplement (for him and his assistants) during the 1996-1997 fiscal year.³ The budget in contest was prepared and completed in conformity to the provisions of the County Budget Act.⁴ That Act authorizes the board of county commissioners to delegate its budget-related functions to a constituted county budget board. Oklahoma County opted for activation of that board. In controversy here is the extent of the power the commissioners retained after delegating to the board their budget-related responsibilities.

¶ 3 The DA submitted to the Oklahoma County Budget Board [budget board] an estimate of office needs for fiscal-year 1996-1997, which included $106,244.46⁵ for the DA's (and his assistants') salary supplement. The commissioners voted on 24 June 1996 to deny that supplement.⁶ Disregarding this negative resolution, the budget board included in its reported county budget the full amount the DA had requested for the salary supplement. This figure was later approved by the county excise board.⁷ On 21 January 1997 the commissioners receded in part from their earlier resolution by approving the DA's salary request but only for the first six months of the fiscal year.⁸

The Declaratory Judgment Action

¶ 4 The DA pressed at nisi prius for a judicial declaration that (a) because sufficient funds were available for payment, the commissioners were powerless to interfere post factum with the amount that stood appropriated for salary supplement in the budget board's approved county budget and (b) the amount of the supplement (reported by the budget board) became a part of the DA's salary by operation of law and came to be constitutionally frozen for the entire term of his office. The commissioners counterclaimed for the trial court to declare that⁹ (a) the power they relinquished by the delegation effected under the provisions of the County Budget Act extended no further than the budget preparation and presentation functions while (b) the authority over budgeting continued to remain under the commissioners' sole management.

¶ 5 The trial court's summary relief to the DA (a) concluded that the commissioners may not deny payment of claims for DA's salary supplement so long as funds are available up to the appropriated amount and (b) declared the included supplement to be free from constitutional restraint.¹⁰ The commissioners brought this appeal.

II

AUTHORITY OVER THE BUDGET WAS PLACED BEYOND THE REACH OF THE COMMISSIONERS WHEN THE BUDGET BOARD'S FUNCTION PASSED ON TO THE SOLE CONTROL OF THE EXCISE BOARD AND THEN THE PROCESS WAS CARRIED TO FINAL CONCLUSION WITHOUT ANY ANTECEDENT COMMISSIONERS' CHALLENGE TO THE DA SUPPLEMENT'S INCLUSION, EVEN THOUGH THE FINALLY APPROVED BUDGET WAS PLAINLY CONTRARY TO THE COMMISSIONERS' EARLIER VOTE (OF 24 JUNE 1996) AGAINST SALARY SUPPLEMENTS (FOR THE DA AND HIS ASSISTANTS)

¶ 6 This is a controversy over the extent of power the commissioners retained after delegating to the budget board their own budget-related functions. The County Budget Act gives absolutely no textual indication of how much authority over the budget is delegated or retained by the board of county commissioners. We can derive no help from the textual analysis of the Act. The question at hand presents a casus omissus.¹¹ As we analyze the problem at hand, it is unnecessary for this appeal's disposition that we decide the extent of power the commissioners had retained.

¶ 7 Assuming, as we do solely for argument's sake, that the commissioners had the authority to affect the budget before it became final, the dispositive issue here is what legal effect, if any, the commissioners' June 24, 1996 and January 21, 1997 resolutions had on the critical appropriation¹²that was in fact made for the DA's 1996-1997 salary supplement.¹³ Based on this record's contents, we accept the parties' admissions that (a) the budget board — in utter disregard of the June 24 resolution — did in fact include in its budget an appropriation that gave full funding to the DA's office for the entire requested fiscal-year salary supplement,¹⁴ and that (b) the budget passed on to the excise board where it was finally approved without any challenge from the commissioners.¹⁵ When filed with the excise board, the county budget constitutes an appropriation for each of the included items subject only to the excise board's final approval.¹⁶ The excise board's role at this terminal stage of the process is (a) to examine the budget for conformity to the law¹⁷ and (b) if the budget will pass legal muster, to certify it as approved.¹⁸

A. The June 24, 1996 Resolution

¶ 8 The commissioners' June 24 resolution clearly became ineffective¹⁹ when the budget board's process²⁰ had reached finality by ripening into an appropriation sans challenge from the commissioners. The responsibility to prevent the approved DA salary supplement from becoming final rested on the commissioners. The County Budget Act does not divest them — qua governing body of the county²¹ — of standing to challenge the budget board's refusal to act in conformity to their resolution. By allowing the budget to reach the terminal stage and thus to be transformed, without protest, into an appropriation,²² the commissioners' inaction permitted the budget board's will to prevail. It is the excise board's approval of the appropriation in contest that imparted to the supplement both its efficacy and finality.

¶ 9 The control over the county budget (1) passes ex lege from the budget board to the excise board when the conditions prescribed in 19 O.S.1991 §§ 1408-1413 are met, and (2) as soon as the provisions of 19 O.S.1991 §§ 1414-1416 are fulfilled, the budget is placed beyond the excise board's reach to become an appropriation. That appropriation, which at its final stage passed the excise board's scrutiny, must control over any discordant board of commissioners' resolutions which either preceded or followed the de jure budget's birth. For a detailed explanation of these critical stages, the reader is referred to the descriptive material in footnotes 22 and 24.

B. The January 21, 1997 Resolution

¶ 10 The commissioners' January 21, 1997 resolution is as ineffective as that of 24 June 1996. It came too late to affect the completed budget process, which by then stood transmuted by operation of law from a de facto into de jure appropriation. Whatever residue of budget authority the commissioners may claim to have retained under the County Budget Act, their exercise of that power, when interposed too late, cannot effectively interfere with a completed budget process. To allow that process to be undone by an act of the commissioners, taken after the terminal stage, would subject to utter chaos the entire fiscal function of the county. We will not assume that the county's decision to come under the budget act was ever intended to transform an otherwise stable and orderly process into a series of chaotic stages that lack orderly framework. In short, when as here, the budget is allowed to arrive at that terminal point at which it ripens — ex lege and sans challenge — into an effective appropriation, it is to be treated as having passed beyond the reach of the commissioners' authority.

C. The Solution Tendered By The Author Of A Statement In Disagreement With The Analysis Offered By The Court's Opinion Would Subject The County Budgetary System To A Serious Constitutional Attack

¶ 11 The concurring-in-judgment statement would exclude the commissioners from standing as protestants before the excise board. That view is not only utterly inconsistent with the 19 O.S.1991 § 1415's plain textual analysis, but would offend against the Art. 5 § 46, Okl. Const., uniformity-of-procedure mandate by injecting havoc into the orderly budget process.²³

No Indicia Are Present of Legislative Intent to Discriminate Between Protesters Who Are Equally Affected By A Budget's Illegality

¶ 12 An excise board budget protest generally is limited to the presence of "any alleged illegality" in the county budget.²⁴ Within the meaning of § 1415, the word "taxpayer" includes any governmental entity that has a patent interest in the county budget. If we failed to consider the commissioners as taxpayers with standing to protest, a large...