State v. Chase
| Decision Date | 27 July 1928 |
| Docket Number | No. 26800.,26800. |
| Parties | STATE ex rel. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA et al. v. CHASE, State Auditor. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Appeal from District Court, Ramsey County; Hugh O. Hanft, Judge.
Mandamus by the State, on the relation of University of Minnesota and the Board of Regents, against Ray P. Chase, State Auditor. Judgment for petitioners, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.
G. A. Youngquist, Atty. Gen., and Charles Phillips, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellant.
Charles W. Bunn, of St. Paul, and Everett Fraser, of Minneapolis, for respondents.
Mandamus on behalf of the University of Minnesota and its board of regents to require Ray P. Chase, state auditor, to approve a voucher and issue his warrant in payment of an item of expense incurred by the regents in a preliminary survey for the purpose of installing a plan of group insurance of members of the faculty and other permanent employees of the University. On the ground of policy alone, that purpose encountered the disapproval of the commission of administration and finance; hence the adverse action of the auditor. Judgment went against him, and he appeals.
On the surface of things, the contest is between the board of regents and the commission of administration and finance, hereinafter mentioned only as the commission. But the real issue is between the regents and the governor, made for them by chapter 426, G. L. 1925, "An act in relation to the organization of the state government." The purpose of the law is to centralize administrative responsibility in the Governor. He appoints the commission with the advice and consent of the Senate. But by section 15 of article 3 of the act all orders and rulings of the commission are subject to review by him, and it is provided in section 2 of article 3 that he may remove any member of the commission at any time without cause.
The commission, with entire candor, "claims authority to supervise and control the expenditure of any and all moneys" by or for the University; "the making of all contracts" by the several officers, departments, and agencies of the state government, including the University and the board of regents; and that the latter cannot lawfully expend any money, from whatever source derived, for University support and administration "for any purpose or object which has been disapproved" by the commission or incur financial obligation for such purpose or object. The right so to control University finances is the power to dictate academic policy and direct every institutional activity. So, in sum, the claim for appellant is that the act of 1925 has subordinated the board of regents to the commission and has made the latter, under the Governor, the final arbiter of all University affairs. The policy of such a law, whether it grants the autocratic power frankly claimed by the commission, or whether (as argued but not now considered) it extends beyond constitutional limits the veto power over appropriations is not for us.
1. Our first problem is whether the commission's position is tenable as a matter of statutory construction. Article 1 of the law establishes specified "departments and agencies of the state government." Neither the University nor the board of regents is among those thereby established. But the article concludes with this sweeping sentence:
"All of said departments and all officials and agencies of the state government shall be subject to * * * this act."
The Railroad and Warehouse Commission, although not one of the departments created by this act, is expressly subject thereto as an agency of state government. State ex rel. Yapp v. Chase, 165 Minn. 268, 206 N. W. 396. If the University is such an agency, the power claimed by the commission is plainly within the law. Section 3 of article 3 confers power "to supervise and control" expenditures by all "departments, and agencies of the state government and of the institutions under their control; the making of all contracts and the creation or incurrence of all financial or contractual obligations; * * * by or for the state or any such department, agency, or institution." By section 5 of the same article, no appropriation to any "official, department, or agency of the state government or to any institution under its control" can become "available for expenditure" without the submission to the commission of an "estimate" and its approval of the same. The obvious intention is to include everything in the way of department or institution used as a means to any end of state government. Education being one of those ends and the University the premier of the state's educational system, it is, in the ordinary and functional sense, plainly an agency of the state. Beyond that, we find stated exceptions from the law's operation, neither the University nor the board of regents being among them. Article 17 declares that the act shall not apply to the State Agricultural Society, and section 6 of article 3, that it shall not reach certain functions of the board of control. Certainly, while these exceptions were being created and stated, the University would also have been expressly excepted, if such had been the intention.
That the University is a state institution, in the legal as well as the colloquial sense, admits of no doubt. In Regents v. Hart, 7 Minn. 61 (Gil. 45), it was said that the board of regents is a public corporation, a "trustee or agent" of the state with "specified and limited powers" for use in a "particular manner for a given end." That language was construed in State ex rel. Smith v. Van Reed, 125 Minn. 194, 145 N. W. 967, as recognizing the University to be a "public institution * * * merely an agency of the state to exercise certain limited and specified powers." The dictum of Gleason v. U. of M., 104 Minn. 359, 362, 116 N. W. 650, that the University could not be relegated to the position "of a mere agency of the state" has to do only with the independent status of the board of regents. It does not imply that the institution is not a mere instrumentality or agency of government in a functional sense. In that view, the government itself is but an agency of the state, distinguished as it must be in accurate thought from its scheme and machinery of government. Grunert v. Spalding, 104 Wis. 193, 80 N. W. 589; Id., 78 N. W. 606, 613. The term "government" itself, in its derivation from the Latin "gubernaculum," signifies the instrument, the helm, whereby the ship, to which the state was compared, was guided on its course by the "gubernator" or helmsman. Bouvier's Law Dict. (Rawle's 3d Rev.) 1366.
"Words in a Constitution, as well as words in a statute, are always to be given the meaning they have in common use, unless there are very strong reasons to the contrary." Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U. S. 139, 147, 6 S. Ct. 649, 652, 29 L. Ed. 833, 835. There being nothing in the act of 1925 to show that its controlling terms were used in other than their ordinary sense, and inasmuch as in that sense they include the University, we conclude that to have been the intention of the law. That is confirmed by the report of the interim committee of the House of Representatives upon the then proposed "reorganization of state government," submitted to the legislative session of 1925. Chapter 426 was its result. The regents were listed as one of the "appointive state administrative boards" and again among the "boards consisting of unsalaried members." Having first included it as a state institution, gentlemen of the ability and purposes possessed by the authors of the measure would not finally have entertained an intention to omit the University without saying so. Their plan did not lack ambition. It did not suggest the express exceptions already referred to. They seem to have come from the Legislature itself. And the thought recurs that members of that body would not have mentioned the exceptions they did without explicitly excluding the University also if that had been their purpose. That the University is a body corporate, with a degree of independence to be discussed later, in no way obstructs the conclusion that it is an agency of government to accomplish a state purpose, just as a municipal corporation, however independent it may be under its charter, is an agency of government for the accomplishment of local purposes. See annotation, 29 L. R. A. 378.
2. So we must determine whether under the constitutional provision about to be considered the Legislature may deprive the regents of the whole or any part of the management of the University. Its original charter was chapter 3 of the Laws of the Territory for 1851. The title, "An act to incorporate the University of Minnesota, at the Falls of St. Anthony," shows that the central purpose was to create a corporation. Section 4 declared that "the government of this University shall be vested in a board of twelve regents" to be elected by the Legislature. The first board was divided into three classes, four regents in each, their terms of office respectively two, four and six years. "Biennially," section 5 proceeds, "thereafter there shall be elected in joint convention of both branches of the Legislature, four members to supply the vacancies made by the provisions of this section, and who shall hold their offices for six years respectively." Section 7 provides that "the regents of the University and their successors in office, shall constitute a body corporate, with the name and style of the `Regents of the University of Minnesota,' with the right as such, of suing and being sued, of contracting and being contracted with, of making and using a common seal." Section 9 gave the regents power and made it their duty "to enact laws for the government of the University" and provided for their appointment of professors, tutors and officers of the institution. Section 20 reserved to the legislative assembly the right at any time to alter, amend, or repeal the act...
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