Wings Field Preservation Associates v. Com.

• Decision Date: 02 May 2001
• Parties: WINGS FIELD PRESERVATION ASSOCIATES, L.P., Petitioner, v. COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Montgomery County and Whitpain Township, Respondents.
• Court: Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court

776 A.2d 311

WINGS FIELD PRESERVATION ASSOCIATES, L.P., Petitioner, v. COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Montgomery County and Whitpain Township, Respondents.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued March 8, 2000.

Decided May 2, 2001.

Kevin J. McKeon, Harrisburg, for petitioner.

Gwendolyn T. Mosley, Harrisburg, for respondent, Department of Transportation.

J. Pierce Anderson, Blue Bell, for respondent, Whitpain Township.

Before FRIEDMAN, Judge, KELLEY, Judge, McCLOSKEY, Senior Judge. KELLEY, Judge.¹

Wings Field Preservation Associates, L.P., (Wings Field) has filed a motion for partial summary judgment (Wings Field Motion) in connection with the petition for review in the nature of a complaint for declaratory judgment (Petition) previously filed by Wings Field in this Court's original jurisdiction. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Transportation (DOT), also has filed a motion for summary judgment (DOT's Motion) with respect to the Wings Field Petition. Both motions are presently before this Court for disposition.² We grant summary judgment in favor of Wings Field.

The following material facts are undisputed. Wings Field is the owner of Wings Field Airport (Airport), a seventy-year-old privately owned, public use airport located in Whitpain Township (Township), Montgomery County. In June 1999, Wings Field submitted a pre-application to DOT seeking a grant to pay for a runway project at the Airport. DOT would not consider the request because Wings Field lacked the township and county approvals required by Section 2210 of the County Code.³ On July 29, 1999, the Township voted not to approve the project, and, because of the Township's action, Montgomery County decided not to consider the project.⁴

On September 3, 1999, Wings Field filed its Petition in this Court's original jurisdiction, seeking a declaratory judgment.⁵ Specifically, Wings Field asked this Court to declare Section 2210 of the County Code unconstitutional because: (1) it is special legislation prohibited by Article III, Section 32 of the Pennsylvania Constitution;⁶ (2) it violates Wings Field's equal protection rights under the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions, and; (3) it violates Wings Field's due process rights under the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions.

On December 23, 1999, Wings Field filed its motion for partial summary judgment,⁷ and DOT subsequently filed its motion for summary judgment.

I. Special Law

The first issue presented is whether Section 2210 of the County Code is unconstitutional because it is special legislation prohibited by Article III, Section 32 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.⁸

A. Article III, Section 32

Article III, Section 32 of the Pennsylvania Constitution states that the General Assembly shall pass no "special law" regulating the affairs of counties or townships. Our Supreme Court has explained that:

[A] special law is the opposite of a general law. A special law is not uniform throughout the state or applied to a class. A general law is. It is well known that the Legislature has classified cities and counties.⁹ A law dealing with all cities or all counties of the same class is not a special law, but a general law, uniform in its application. But a law dealing with but one county of a class consisting of ten, would be local or special.

Appeal of Torbik, 548 Pa. 230, 241, 696 A.2d 1141, 1146 (1997) (quoting Heuchert v. State Harness Racing Commission, 403 Pa. 440, 446-47, 170 A.2d 332, 336 (1961)).

When Article III, Section 32 became part of Pennsylvania's constitution in 1873, its purpose was to prevent the General Assembly from creating classifications in order to grant privileges to one person, one company or one county.¹⁰ However, Article III, Section 32 was not intended to prevent the General Assembly from creating statutory classifications to meet diverse needs. Danson v. Casey, 33 Pa. Cmwlth. 614, 382 A.2d 1238 (1978), aff'd,484 Pa. 415, 399 A.2d 360 (1979); Higher Education Assistance Agency v. Abington Memorial Hospital, 24 Pa.Cmwlth. 352, 356 A.2d 837 (1976), aff'd,478 Pa. 514, 387 A.2d 440 (1978). Thus, Article III, Section 32 allows a legislative classification that has some rational relationship to a proper state purpose.¹¹Danson; Tosto v. Pennsylvania Nursing Home Loan Agency, 460 Pa. 1, 331 A.2d 198 (1975). Our Supreme Court has explained that:

Classification is allowed because of necessity [that springs] from manifest peculiarities clearly distinguishing those of one class from each of the other classes and imperatively demanding legislation for each class separately that would be useless and detrimental to the others.

Allegheny County v. Monzo, 509 Pa. 26, 44, 500 A.2d 1096, 1105 (1985) (quoting Commonwealth ex rel. Brown v. Gumbert, 256 Pa. 531, 100 A. 990 (1917)); see also Appeal of Ayars, 122 Pa. 266, 16 A. 356 (1889). It is such manifest peculiarities within a legislative class that provide the only permissible justification for a legislative override of the uniformity required by Article III, Section 32.

Uniformity is a foundational principle upon which our Constitution is based, both generally, and specifically in relation to local government.¹² This uniformity is the crux of the issue at hand. When dealing with distinctions based upon population, Article III, Section 20 of the Pennsylvania Constitution makes clear that only "laws passed relating to each class ... shall be deemed general legislation." (Emphasis provided). The classes referenced in that language are those that Article III, Section 20 empowers the General Assembly to establish, namely, those dividing the counties of Pennsylvania into nine population-based classes as established in Sections 210 and 211 of the County Code. The establishment of those classes by the General Assembly, pursuant to the grant of authority of Article III, Section 20, enables the General Assembly to employ flexibility in addressing the unique needs of diversely populated counties throughout the Commonwealth in such a way as to treat similarly populated counties with the uniformity that our Constitution requires.

Any argument that legislation such as Section 2210 is necessary to provide the General Assembly with added flexibility in dealing with diverse needs among municipalities serving varying population levels is refuted by an examination of the prior provisions of the earlier constitutional section corresponding to Article III, Section 20. Former Section 34 of Article III empowered the General Assembly to classify municipalities within our Commonwealth with language identical to present Section 20 of Article III, with one notable exception: former Section 34 specifically restricted the number of classes that could be employed by the General Assembly in dividing the various municipalities within the Commonwealth. By replacing former Section 34 with current Section 20 in 1923, the General Assembly eliminated the restrictions on the number of legislative classifications, thereby freeing the General Assembly to divide counties and other municipalities into as many classes as the General Assembly deemed necessary. The requirement of uniformity within those classifications was also part of the content of former Section 34, and remains in current Section 20. If the General Assembly were to find that a particular class's needs were not being met by the current classifications contained in Sections 210 and 211 of the County Code, they are, since 1923, free to amend those Sections. With Section 2210, however, the General Assembly's treatment of the class established in Section 210 of the County Code fails on its face to meet Article III, Section 32's clear mandate to uniformly relate Section 2210 to the class to which it applies.¹³

B. Section 2210 of the County Code

On April 22, 1998, the General Assembly enacted House Bill No. 2281 as the General Appropriation Act of 1998 (Appropriation Act), Act of April 22, 1998, P.L. 1341. Section 821 of the Appropriation Act stated that local approval would be required for the expenditure of federal or state money for airports "in a county of the second class A." Thus, as of April 22, 1998, all three counties of the second class A possessed the right of local approval for airport funding. However, less than two months later, on June 18, 1998, the General Assembly enacted Senate Bill No. 220, which repealed Section 821's local approval provision and added Section 2210 to the County Code.

Section 2210 of the County Code prohibits the expenditure of federal or state money for airport operations or development "in any county of the second class A having a population in excess of 675,000 persons without the approval of the municipality or municipalities wherein such airport is situated." 16 P.S. § 2210. The parties have stipulated that Montgomery County is the only county of the second class A with a population in excess of 675,000 persons. Memorandum Opinion of 10/29/99 at 2. Bucks County and Delaware County are also counties of the second class A, but they have fewer than 675,000 persons.¹⁴

In the case sub judice, then, our initial mandate is to simply inquire whether the law in question is "not uniform ... [as] applied to a class." Appeal of Torbik, 548 Pa. at 241, 696 A.2d at 1146 (citations omitted).

Section 2210 does not establish a new class such as those defined in Section 210 of the County Code. Additionally, Section 2210 does not modify the classes established in Section 210 as provided for in Section 211 of the County Code. What Section 2210 does do is to vest in one county a singular and unique power that cannot be exercised by all of the members of the class to which that one county has already been legislatively assigned. That the classification in the instant case concerns a single county that is a member of a class comprised of three counties, as contrasted with our Supreme Court's articulation that "a law dealing...