BENTON COUNTY : Law on funding of roads upheld
Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/225157/
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday rejected 6-1 Benton County’s bid to scrap a law requiring that almost all local road funds collected within Bentonville, Rogers and Siloam Springs be spent in the three cities.
Act 219 of 1963 states that 90 percent of road funds collected within the cities shall go to them for street projects.
Benton County argued that the law violated Amendment 14 of the state constitution barring “local or special” legislation, such as laws that have no general state purpose.
County officials obtained affidavits from other cities in the county asserting that they needed road funds as much as Bentonville, Rogers or Siloam Springs. The county also said it needed additional road money for its burgeoning needs. Act 219 is patently unconstitutional, it claimed.
The Supreme Court ruling, written by Chief Justice Jim Hannah, said the county failed to prove that Act 219 had no “rational relationship to a legitimate government purpose.”
To overturn local legislation, plaintiffs must show not only that it affects only a single portion of the state, but also that the “act was not rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose,” the Supreme Court said.
Benton County showed that Act 219 related only to one region but did not establish that there was no legitimate government purpose related to it, the ruling said.
The court also made clear that there is a time factor in demonstrating unconstitutionality in regard to the 45-year-old law: “The question presented on an Amendment 14 challenge is ‘whether the General Assembly could have had a rational basis for making the classification, ’” the high court said, quoting its ruling in an earlier case. “The phrase ‘ could have had’ shows that this court looks to see whether the legislation violated Amendment 14 at the time the legislation was adopted.”
It noted that in another case it disagreed that an act should be declared violative of Amendment 14 because “some disparate tax treatment affecting border cities might arise in the future...”
“Further, this court consistently stated in [the case of ] City of Siloam Springs, supra, that Benton County had to show that the ‘act was not rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose.’ Use of the phrase ‘was not’ means the question is whether the legislation violated Amendment 14 at the time it was passed. Thus, a challenger must prove that there was no rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose at the time the legislation was passed. No proof was offered to show that in 1963, Act 219 ‘ was not rationally related to achieving any legitimate objective of state government under any reasonably conceivable state of facts. ’”
“As the City of Bentonville notes, ‘ The record is devoid of population figures for Benton County or any of the cities about roads and commercial activity there from the 1963 time period, ’” the court said. “There is also no evidence offered regarding Benton County or other cities in other counties in the 1963 time period. We must presume Act 219 of 1963 is constitutional, or in other words, that it was related to a legitimate governmental interest when enacted.”
The county asserted that there was “no conceivable rational basis for” Act 219.
In another “local laws” case in 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature can’t pass laws that only benefit a local entity without some connection to a state function. That ruling came in a suit filed by former state Rep. Mike Wilson, D-Jacksonville, challenging appropriations enacted in the 2005 benefiting projects in Jacksonville and Bigelow.
Thursday’s action was not the first time that the state’s highest court examined Act 219. In 2002, the Supreme Court reversed a 2002 trial court ruling that Act 219 was unconstitutional.
A concurring opinion Thursday by Justice Robert L. Brown and joined by Justice Annabelle Clinton Imber agreed the county failed to demonstrate a lack of state purpose.
“It is not the job of this court to speculate about the circumstances in 1963 which might Militate in favor of a conclusion that Act 219 was special or local legislation under Amendment 14. Nor is it our job to ascertain those circumstances and make the arguments for the parties,” Brown wrote.
It “remains an open question” whether the 1963 law violated the constitution, Brown and Imber said.
A dissent by Justice Donald L. Corbin said the court majority had strayed from the court’s precedents in this case.
“It is clear to me that there is no rational reason for” the distinction that Act 219 makes, Corbin wrote.
“Why are the three most populous cities in Benton County apportioned more road tax revenue but not the three most populous cities in Pulaski County ?” he wrote.
At the Supreme Court, the case is 07-394, Benton County, Arkansas v. City of Bentonville, City of Siloam Springs, City of Rogers, City of Pea Ridge, City of Centerton, City of Garfield, and City of Avoca.