Trinity Independent School Dist. v. Walker County

• Decision Date: 16 February 1956
• Docket Number: 12941,Nos. 12940,s. 12940
• Citation: 287 S.W.2d 717
• Parties: TRINITY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellant, v. WALKER COUNTY et al., Appellees. TRINITY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellant, v. TRINITY COUNTY et al., Appellees.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 717

287 S.W.2d 717

TRINITY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellant, v.WALKER COUNTY et al., Appellees.

TRINITY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellant, v.TRINITY COUNTY et al., Appellees.

Nos. 12940, 12941.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas, Galveston.

Feb. 16, 1956.

Rehearing Denied March 8, 1956.

P. H. Cauthan, Jr., Trinity, and Joe J. Newman, Houston, for appellant.

John W. Phillips, County Atty. of Walker County, and Reginald Bracewell, Huntsville, attys. for appelleesWalker County and others.

Albert Hutson, Jr., County Atty. of Trinity County, Groveton, and McClain & Harrell, Conroe, attys. for appelleesTrinity County and others.

GANNON, Justice.

These two appeals are brought by Trinity Independent School District from adverse judgments of the trial court in two suits brought by Trinity Independent School District against Walker County et al. and Trinity County et al., respectively, to recover certain moneys which the plaintiff school district claimed as its own and which it alleged the Commissioners Courts of the respective counties had diverted from it and paid over to other school districts of the respective counties.The defendants in the two cases other than the counties are other school districts to whom it is claimed the funds were diverted.The funds involved are those paid the State of Texas from the proceeds of the national forests under the authority of Chapter 2, § 500,Title 16 U.S.C.A.

A proper disposition of the cases requires us to determine the true intent of the Legislature in enacting Sec. 1 of Chapter 19 of the Acts of the 49th Legislature1945, now known as Article 2351b-4, Vernon's Ann.Civ.Tex.St., allocating and prorating the funds received by Texas from the Federal Government under the terms of the Federal statute.

The litigation arises because no part of the Federal forest lands lies in plaintiff school district.The defendant Commissioners Courts construe Art. 2351b-4 as directing payment of the allocated funds only to those school districts of the counties embracing Federal forest lands.Plaintiff school district contends this is incorrect.

The Federal law was enacted in 1907 and provides for the payment to the several states in which national forests are located of 25% of moneys realized from the forests.When a national forest lies in only one state, the entire ik% of the receipts from that forest goes to such state, but in the case of national forests located in only one state, the entire 25% of the receipts of each is in proportion to the area of the forest in each state.Chapter 2, § 500 of Title 16, further provides for an allocation as between counties in a single state and for a ceiling on the amount to be paid any particular county of not more than 40% of the total income of the county from all other sources.The Federal legislation makes the state the original recipient of the payment but directs the expenditure of the fund by the state in aid of public education and public road building in the various counties.The national statute reads:

'Twenty-five per centum of all moneys received during any fiscal year from each national forest shall be paid, at the end of such year, by the Secretary of the Treasury to the State in which such national forest is situated, to be expended as the Statelegislature may prescribe for the benefit of the public schools and public roads of the county or counties in which such national forest is situated: Provided, that when any national forest is in more than one State or county the distributive share to each from the proceeds of such forest shall be proportional to its area therein: Provided further, That there shall not be paid to any State for any county an amount equal to more than 40 per centum of the total income of such county from all other sources.'

It is contended by defendants that the moneys involved are in lieu of taxes.This contention is made generally without identifying the taxes in lieu of which the payments are made, i. e., whether only road and school taxes or any and all manner of taxes which the State or any of its subdivisions might be authorized to levy and might have seen fit to exact.Nor do defendants offer any explanation of why, if the payments are in lieu of school and road taxes, both and each, the Federal Government, while limiting the uses to which the funds may be put to education and road building, still permits the free interchange of funds in the nature of road taxes for educational purposes and of funds in the nature of school taxes for road purposes.Neither do defendants seek to explain why, if the payments are in lieu of taxes because, and only because, the presence of the national forests in the states operates to deny the states the right to tax forest lands for any and all purposes as in its sovereign judgment the state might see fit, the national Government still limits the uses to which the funds may be put to education and road building.

It is the plaintiff's contention that the subject moneys are not in lieu of taxes but are a pure grant in aid of the inhabitants generally of the various counties to be used only within the counties and only for the purposes limited, as in the judgment of the state as trustee may seem best.This contention comports with the widely understood basic idea of a trust with donor, trustee, and beneficiary, the trust conferring discretion upon the trustee to direct the expenditure of the funds for the stated purposes, either or both, as in the judgment of the trustee may seem wise.Under such concept, the Federal Government is donor, the State Government is discretionary trustee, and the counties, or less literally the inhabitants of the counties, are the beneficiaries, and the prescribed purposes are education and road building.In this connection, it is to be noted that the Federal allocation of national forest receipts, after division between states, is only as between counties within a state.When we consider this definite allocation as between counties within a state in the light of the language of the statute providing that the funds are 'for the benefit of the public schools and the public roads of the county or counties' and when we further consider that by the Federal statute the only discretion in allocating funds conferred on the state is as between purposes, no such discretion being conferred as between counties, the statute does seem to give considerably more evidence of the establishment of a true trust to carry out a wish and desire of the donor than of a payment in lieu of taxes.If the payment provided for be in lieu of taxes, it would appear the Federal Government has recognized an equity of the State because of being deprived of what but for the presence of the national Government would be its untrammeled right to levy taxes on the national forest lands, but still has fallen far short of recognizing at the same time the normal and natural right of a sovereign state to levy taxes for what purposes it will.Surely, the payments are not in lieu of taxes generally.Equally as surely, it would appear they are not in lieu of school taxes as such or road taxes as such, for the State is free to direct the payments to be used for the one purpose to the exclusion of the other.So, if the payments be in recognition of the deprivation of the right of a sovereign state or a subdivision of such a state to levy taxes by reason of the presence of the national forests within the state, then such recognition would appear to be a most restricted one bordering on the haughty and overbearing; that is to say, since a payment in lieu of taxes connotes restitution, as it were, it would seem unnatural for one sovereign, in making restitution to another, for the restitution to be accompanied by directions for its restricted use to limited purposes within a circumscribed area of the payee sovereign.In short, it is difficult to explain why one sovereign would be willing to deal with another on the basis of such submission.On the other hand, if the idea of a trust be accepted, the arrangement provided by the Federal statute seems natural and right.And, if the statute be but late evidence of an early desire by the Federal Government to aid the inhabitants of local areas upon which the impact of its presence falls most heavily, then the trust idea is well nigh inescapable.

It is true that in Hagar v. Reclamation District, 111 U.S. 701, 4 S.Ct. 663, 670, 28 L.Ed. 569, followingMills County v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co., 107 U.S. 557, 2 S.Ct. 654, 27 L.Ed. 578, there is a ruling that certain donations of land by the Federal Government to the state for limited purposes, as provided in the Arkansas Swamp Act of September 28, 1850, 9 Stat. 519, did not impose on the donation 'a trust following the lands', nevertheless, it is clearly implied that such donations did establish trusts, the faithful execution of which rested 'solely in the good faith of the state.'Nor is the language of the Federal Supreme Court, in King County, Wash., v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 263 U.S. 361, 44 S.Ct. 127, 68 L.Ed. 339, wherein it was held that a donation under Title 16, Chapter 2, Section 500, did not create a trust for the benefit of the several school districts of the several counties of the state in which the national forest lands were located, at war with the idea that the Federal Act does create a trust for other beneficiaries.

The Swamp Actcases merely hold that no trust running with the land was created and the King County case merely holds that the particular school district involved in that litigation was not the beneficiary of whatever trust may have been created by payments pursuant to the Federal legislation.The decision proceeds on the idea that even assuming a trust, the appellee had no right to enforce it since it was not a beneficiary of the trust.

A clear holding that Federal payments or donations such as the payments involved here are trust funds...