State v. Thompson

• Decision Date: 13 May 1915
• Docket Number: 171
• Citation: 69 So. 461,193 Ala. 561
• Parties: STATE ex rel. GUNTER et al. v. THOMPSON et al.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

69 So. 461

193 Ala. 561

STATE ex rel. GUNTER et al. v. THOMPSON et al.

No. 171

Supreme Court of Alabama

May 13, 1915

Rehearing Denied June 30, 1915

Appeal from City Court of Montgomery; Horace Stringfellow, Special Judge.

Information in the nature of quo warranto by the State of Alabama, on the relation of W.A. Gunter and others, against J.A. Thompson and others, acting as a Board of Public Safety for the City of Montgomery. Judgment for defendants, and relators appeal. Affirmed.

W.A Gunter and E.S. Watts, both of Montgomery, for appellants.

Rushton Williams & Crenshaw and Hill, Hill, Whiting & Stern, all of Montgomery, for appellees.

SAYRE J.

Appellees are exercising authority as a board of public safety for the city of Montgomery by virtue of an act entitled:

"An act to amend an act entitled 'An act to provide and create a commission form of municipal government and to establish same in all cities of Alabama which now have or which may hereafter have a population of as much as twenty-five thousand and less than fifty thousand people according to the last federal census, or any such census which may hereafter be taken; to regulate the selection and election of commissioners and their terms of office and recall from office, to fix their powers, duties and compensation, to punish improper conduct in connection with elections and petitions hereunder; to abolish police commissioners, aldermen and certain other city officials, and otherwise provide for the creation and maintenance of said commission form of government,' approved April 6, 1911."

This amendatory act was passed over the Governor's veto February 5, 1915. Acts 1915, p. 52. This proceeding, an information in the nature of quo warranto, attacks the constitutional validity of the last act on various grounds.

In the beginning we note that the Legislature has ample authority to alter or amend the charter powers of municipal corporations in this state by general law and to repeal by general or local law the charter of any such corporation. Ensley v. Simpson, 166 Ala. 366, 377, 52 So. 61. It must be borne in mind, also, that the propriety and wisdom of the acts of the Legislature, so long as they contravene no provision of the organic law, are questions peculiarly and exclusively within the decisive right of that department of the government, and the courts have no right to bring them under review on the ground that, apart from the Constitution, they are unwise or run counter to sound governmental policy. Meyer v. Greene, 154 Ala. 249, 46 So. 268. And, since much has been said in oral argument and in briefs with the apparent purpose of impressing upon this court the idea that the act in question was inspired by sinister notions--is, in fact, a fraud upon the Constitution and the previous organization of the only municipality to which, in present conditions, the act applies--it may be well to add that the judicial department is wholly without authority to institute an inquiry concerning the motives or purposes of the Legislature in order to find in its enactments merits or demerits, except as these may be disclosed on the face of the acts, or may be inferred from their operation, considered with reference to previously existing legislation and such other general conditions as every court must be presumed to know and understand. Hawkins v. Roberts, 122 Ala. 130, 27 So. 327. These general propositions are without the pale of profitable discussion.

It is contended by counsel for appellants, relators in the court below, that the act in question offends against section 45 of the Constitution, for that so much of it as provides for a board of public safety is not clearly expressed in its title. This act undertakes to restate the entire statutory law of the state on the subject of government by commission in cities having a population of as much as 25,000 and less than 50,000. With the exception of some minor temporary provisions, to be later noted, it is in effect an original act replacing the act of April 6, 1911. It follows closely the last-mentioned act in every particular, except that it provides for three commissioners, one of whom shall by the commission be elected president, instead of a president and four commissioners; and it contains an entirely new provision in which it is declared that no person shall be eligible as a commissioner who, either by election or appointment, shall have held the office of president or member of the commission for three consecutive years within the four years immediately preceding the date of any election of commissioners; it abolishes the office of recorder, the duties of that office being imposed upon one of the commissioners to be designated by the commission; and by section 27 the board of public safety is created. The objection to the act, mentioned above, is planted upon section 27, the effect of which may for the purpose at hand be sufficiently stated as follows: The board of safety consists of three members elective by the Senate in the beginning and every four years thereafter, occasional vacancies to be filled by appointment of the Governor; it exercises "complete and exclusive control and authority" over the police and fire departments, which are taken away from the commissioners, the board of safety increasing or diminishing the numbers of the officers and members of these departments in their discretion. The section provides that "the salary of the officers and members of said departments shall be paid out of the treasury of any such city upon the order of said board of public safety," the board having the power to fix such salaries; and, we conclude our statement of the substance of the section by quoting:

"It is hereby expressly made the duty of the said board of commissioners of any such city to make all proper provision and provide for the equipment, maintenance, operation, quartering, supplies and appropriations to defray the expenses of operation of such department (meaning, as the context shows, both the police and fire departments) to be paid out of the funds of the city, where not in conflict with the provisions of this act, within three days from the date such action is requested in writing of the board of commissioners by the board of public safety."

No legislative powers, unless the fixing of salaries for its officers and agents be such, are given to the board. Its function is to exercise control over the personnel and practical operations of the departments committed to its care.

The main argument on this branch of the case is that the provision for a board of public safety with the powers indicated is a radical departure from the fundamental theory and principle of the commission form of government which, counsel say, consists in the concentration of all municipal powers in a few persons who must be elected by the people and kept directly under their control by various provisions such as the recall, initiative, and referendum, and others calculated to take city government out of politics and to prevent corruption in administration. Hence the conclusion is drawn that the change ingrafted upon the previous government by the creation of an independent board of safety, elected by the Senate and not subject to recall by the people, is not clearly expressed in the title of the act, which announces the purpose to provide and create a commission form of municipal government.

The most general and comprehensive idea expressed in the title of this act, the expression of legislative purpose to which all else in the title may be, and to which all else in the body of the act must be referred, is "to provide and create a commission form of municipal government." It is the settled construction of the constitutional rule invoked that so long as the generality of the title is not made a cover for legislation incongruous in itself, and which by no fair intendment can be considered as having necessary or proper connection between its parts, there is no cause of objection. State v. Street, 117 Ala. 203, 23 So. 807. Counsel for relators would have the court make to the details of this statute a Procrustean application of a certain conception that has been evolved by their own learned reflection upon ideals of government. But we have been unable to find any authoritative hard and fast definition of the commission form of government that descends into all the details of the plan nor do we believe any such definition exists in the popular mind. The general idea suggested by the phrase is that of a concentration of all the powers of municipal government in a few persons; of a government...