Sun Valley Co. v. City of Sun Valley , 109 Idaho 424 ( 1985 )

DONALDSON, Chief Justice.

In 1978, the Idaho legislature enacted the “City Property Tax Alternatives Act of 1978” I.C. § 50-1043 et seq.¹ (the Act). The purpose of the Act, set out in the original legislation, was to remove from property owners the burden of providing tax dollars for those non-resident services provided by resort communities.

Pursuant to the Act, the City of Sun Valley (the City) passed Ordinance # 123. This ordinance imposed a 5% tax on hotel and motel rooms and liquor by the drink and was approved by the City voters on December 15, 1978. Since the tax was limited to a five-year duration, on November 22, 1983, a new ordinance, Ordinance # 165, was passed. This is the ordinance currently in effect. It imposes a 5% tax on motel and hotel rooms and liquor by the drink and is limited to a four-year duration.

On September 14, 1983, the Sun Valley Company (the Company) filed a declaratory judgment action against the City to determine the validity of the Act, its subsequent amendments and the local ordinance passed pursuant to the Act. The Company asserted that the Act was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority to the City, that it was an unconstitutional local or special law, and that it violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the state and federal constitutions. On September 7,1984, the Company filed a motion for summary judgment on all issues. After briefing and oral argument, the district court granted the Company’s motion. The district court found that the Act delegated legislative authority to municipalities without adequate standards and therefore was unconstitutional. No ruling was made as to the Company’s other challenges. This appeal followed.

I.

The City argues that the Act is not a delegation of legislative authority and therefore, standards are not required. We agree with the City. The Act is not a delegation of legislative authority, but rather an implementation of a constitutional authority that is not self-executing.

Art. 7, § 6 of the Idaho Constitution provides:

“§ 6. Municipal corporations to impose their own taxes. — The legislature shall not impose taxes for the purpose of any county, city, town, or other municipal corporation, but may by law invest in the corporate authorities thereof, respectively, the power to assess and collect, taxes for all purposes of such corporation.”

The intent of this section was first discussed in State v. Nelson, 36 Idaho 713, 213 P. 358 (1923).

“Manifestly, the reason for placing this limitation upon the legislative power to tax is to give local communities, organized as municipal corporations, the power to impose upon themselves for their needs only such burdens in the way of taxation as they themselves determine through their governing officials.” Id. at 719, 213 P. at 359.

Initially this section was held to apply exclusively to property taxes. Leonardson v. Moon, 92 Idaho 796, 803, 451 P.2d 542, 549 (1969). Under this interpretation, cities had broad authority to “assess and collect [property] taxes for all purposes of such corporation.” Hamilton v. McCall, 90 Idaho 253, 259, 409 P.2d 393, 397 (1965). Then, in Greater Boise Aud. v. Royal Inn of Boise, 106 Idaho 884, 684 P.2d 286 (1984), we overruled State v. Nelson and held that the section also pertained to excise taxes. It stands to reason, then, that if cities have broad powers of property taxation under art. 7, § 6, they also have broad powers to impose excise taxes if authorized by the legislature through implementing legislation.

This interpretation is supported by a plain reading of the section. The first clause of art. 7 § 6 states: “[t]he legislature shall not impose taxes for the purpose of any ... city____” This clause is a limitation on the legislature’s otherwise plenary powers in the area of taxation. Because of this clause, the legislature has no power to impose taxes for or on behalf of cities. The second clause of art. 7 § 6 allows the legislature to “invest in the corporate authorities ... the power to assess and collect taxes for all purposes of such corporation.” Thus the grant of taxing power to cities is not self-executing or unlimited. It is limited by what taxing power the legislature authorizes in its implementing legislation.

Additionally, the legislature itself recognized that it was not delegating its authority under the Act but was “investing” the power in municipalities. I.C. § 50-1044 provides that “[t]he voters of any resort city ... are hereby given the freedom to authorize their city government to adopt, implement, and collect one or more local-option nonproperty taxes as provided herein.”

II.

The Company urges that the trial court properly determined that the Act was a delegation of legislative authority, and, thus, under art. 3, § 1 of the Idaho Constitution which provides that all legislative power is vested in the senate and house of representatives, the Act must contain meaningful standards. The Company’s argument fails for three reasons. First, it ignores the plain language of art. 7, § 6 of the Idaho Constitution as discussed above. Second, even if the Act is a delegation of legislative authority, the Company’s analysis under art. 3, § 1 is misconceived. Historically, this section (as similar sections in other state constitutions and as in the federal constitution) has been interpreted to limit the delegation of legislative authority to other branches of government. United States v. Shreveport Grain & Elevator Co., 287 U.S. 77, 85, 53 S.Ct. 42, 44, 77 L.Ed. 175 (1932). The non-delegation doctrine, as it is called, traditionally required that laws delegating legislative authority to either the executive branch or the judiciary contain meaningful “standards.” These standards were to insure that decision makers in the other branches, who were not publicly accountable through the election process, would not act arbitrarily, capriciously or discriminatorily. However, because of the impracticality and the inflexibility of such a requirement, the non-delegation doctrine has long been dead in the federal courts, 1 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 3.2 (1978), and has since been recast in many state courts. Id. § 3.14. The modern view is that broad delegation of legislative authority is proper and indeed necessary. Id. § 3.15 (Supp. 1980) Instead of requiring standards to control discretion, the current view is that the legislation itself or the agency’s internal guidelines should provide meaningful safeguards against arbitrary decision making; for example, a right to a hearing or judicial review of agency decision making. See Warren v. Marion County, 222 Or. 307, 353 P.2d 257 (1960).

The third reason that respondent’s delegation argument fails is because the non-delegation doctrine is not precisely applicable to this case. The non-delegation doctrine is a doctrine of administrative law. In the usual case, the challenger attacks an agency’s authority to make legislative determinations. In the instant case, the “delegation” at issue, the Act, is not to the executive branch, but rather to another legislative body.

III.

The Company contends that the Act does not contain the safeguards required by Greater Boise Aud. v. Royal Inn of Boise, supra. However, even if Greater Boise would require safeguards in the present case, there are sufficient safeguards in the Act:

First, under the Act any tax proposed by the City must be passed by a 60% majority vote and may not be increased without subsequent majority approval. I.C. § 50-1047 requires that the ordinance which is submitted to the voters state and define the specific tax, state the exact rate of the tax, state the purpose for which the revenue is to be used and state the duration of the tax. These public voting requirements ensure the tax will be reasonable because the tax may only be imposed by cities that derive the major portion of their economic well being from tourism. Also, the Act does not exempt the city residents from paying the tax they have approved. They will be buying liquor by the drink, beer, wine and making other purchases subject to a sales tax. It is unreasonable to assume that the city residents will impose a prohibitive tax upon themselves. Second, the election of local city council members who propose the tax is always a safeguard against arbitrary action by the city council. Finally, the legislature may always amend the Act, which it did in 1981 and again in 1984, or repeal the Act. Accordingly, even if the Company were correct that the Act requires safeguards, there are sufficient safeguards present in the Act.

Accordingly, the decision of the trial court with respect to this delegation issue is reversed.

IV.

In its motion for summary judgment, the Company also raised issues of whether the Act is a local or special law in violation of art. 3, § 19 of the Idaho Constitution, and whether the Act violates the Company’s state and federal equal protection or due process rights. The district court, having ruled that the Act was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority, did not reach these issues. However since the Company’s motion for summary judgment stated that there were no factual issues in dispute and that the trial court could decide the constitutional issues as a matter of law, Williams v. Paxton, 98 Idaho 155, 163, 559 P.2d 1123, 1131 (1976); Thompson v. Hagan, 96 Idaho 19, 523 P.2d 1365 (1974), and since the matters are purely those of law, and were fully briefed and argued before us we will decide these issues. “When this court is squarely presented with a constitutional issue, as in this proceeding, it must rule on the issue.” Thompson, supra at 24, 523 P.2d 1365. Each will be dealt with in turn.

A.

Art. 3, § 19 of the Idaho Constitution prohibits the legislature from enacting local or special laws in matters of taxation. This Court has held that a law “is not special when it treats all persons in similar situations alike,” Twin Falls Clinic and Hospital Bldg. v. Hamill, 103 Idaho 19, 26, 644 P.2d 341, 348 (1982), nor is it local “when it applies equally to all areas of the state.” School Dist. No. 25 v. State Tax Commission, 101 Idaho 283, 291, 612 P.2d 126, 134 (1980). The test of whether a classification is local or special is whether the classification is arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable. Washington County v. Paradis., 38 Idaho 364, 369, 222 P. 775, 369 (1923).

In this case, the Act applies to all resort cities with a population under 10,000 where tourism is the major industry. The legislative purpose accompanying the legislation is:

“Several Idaho resort communities spend significant amounts of money providing services for tourists who do not contribute significantly to the tax base of the community. In order to remove property owners from the burden of providing tax dollars for these non-resident services, we proposed to allow resort communities in counties with a population not in excess of 20,000 to implement and collect hotel-motel and/or liquor-by-the-drink taxes, providing that 60% of the majority of the voters in an election support the implementation of such taxes. The ordinance submitted to the voters must state and define the specific tax, state the exact purposes for which revenues will be used, state the rate of the tax and the duration of the tax.”² Statement of Purpose, H.B. 373, 44 Idaho Legis., 2d Sess. (1978).

Thus the legislature took notice of the fact that resort cities are burdened by transient populations to a much greater extent than non-resort cities, and that such transient populations do burden the resort cities with additional costs and expenses for public services. Also, it is logical and reasonable for the legislature to believe that small resort cities, because of the disproportionate ratio of tourist to residents, require greater or different tax relief than the larger resort cities.³ Larger resort cities obviously have a larger real property tax base to support public services to accommodate the transient influx. Small resort cities, on the other hand, have fewer real property owners and a smaller tax base to support the services necessary to accommodate such influx. Accordingly, the classifications in the Act are not arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable. Therefore, the Act is not an unconstitutional local or special law.

B.

The Company also contends that the Act is a violation of its equal protection and due process rights under the state and federal constitutions. Since we have interpreted the equal protection clauses and the due process clauses of both the state and federal constitutions as substantially equivalent, a single analysis for each clause will suffice. Jones v. State Board of Medicine, 97 Idaho 859, 555 P.2d 399 (1976).

In this instance, the classification challenged is resort cities with populations under 10,000. Such a classification is not “suspect,” Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 372, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 1852, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1971), nor does it involve a fundamental right,” San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973). Therefore, the classification will withstand an equal protection challenge if “there is any conceivable state of facts which will support it, and the burden is upon the one attacking the legislative arrangement to negative any conceivable basis which might support it.” School Dist. No. 25, 101 Idaho at 288, 612 P.2d at 131. We have already held that there are valid differences supporting the legislative classification between resort cities under 10,000 and all other cities and, thus, the classification withstands this equal protection challenge.

The Company also argues that as applied the Act is discriminatory because in Sun Valley the tax is 5% whereas right next door in Ketchum the tax is 1%. However, again there is a rational basis to support such a distinction. Not only does each resort city have varying needs, but the percentage influx of tourists varies with each city’s population. For example, the percentage increase during Ketchum’s peak season is 309% as compared to Sun Valley’s at 1,355%. Therefore, the Act does not violate the Company’s equal protection rights under either the state or federal constitutions.

The Company’s due process challenge must also fail. Assuming there is a liberty or property interest at stake, if there is a rational basis to support the challenged regulation, it will be upheld. See Jones v. State Board of Medicine, supra 97 Idaho at 866, 555 P.2d at 406. For the reasons stated above, there is a rational basis to support the legislative purpose of the Act.

The judgment of the district court is reversed and remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Costs to appellant.

No attorney fees on appeal.

HUNTLEY, J., concurs. BAKES, J., concurs in all but Part II, in which he concurs in the result of Part II.

1 . 1978 Idaho Sess. Laws, ch. 261, p. 567. Amendments to that legislation were subsequently adopted, and are as follows:

"50-1044. Authority for resort city residents to approve and resort city governments to adopt, implement, and collect certain city nonproperty taxes. — The voters of any resort city with a population not in excess of ten thousand (10,000) according to the most recent census within the state of Idaho, organized under the general laws of the state, special charter, or a general incorporation act, are hereby given the freedom to authorize their city government to adopt, implement, and collect one or more local-option nonproperty taxes as provided herein. A resort city is a city that derives the major portion of its economic well-being from businesses catering to recreational needs and meeting needs of people traveling to that destination city for an extended period of time. The corporate authorities of any such resort city are hereby given the freedom and authority to adopt, implement, and collect one or more local-option nonproperty taxes as provided herein, if approved by the required majority of city voters voting in an election as provided herein. No local-option nonproperty tax proposal may be presented to resort city voters for approval or modification for a period of one (1) year after an election to approve or disapprove such tax. The election may be a special election conducted for the exclusive purpose of approving or disapproving such tax, or may be conducted as part of any other special or general city election.” 1981 Idaho Sess. Laws, ch. 328, p. 687.

“50-1046. City local-option nonproperty taxes permitted by sixty per cent majority vote. — A sixty percent (60%) majority of the voters of any resort city voting on the question may approve and, upon such approval, any city may adopt, implement, and collect, subject to the provisions of this act, the following city local-option nonproperty taxes: (a) an occupancy tax upon hotel, motel, and other sleeping accommodations rented or leased for a period of thirty (30) days or less; (b) a tax upon liquor by-the-drink, wine and beer sold at retail for consumption on the licensed premises; and (c) a sales tax upon part or all of sales subject to taxation under chapter 36, title 63, Idaho Code.” 1984 Idaho Sess. Laws, ch. 225, p. 542.

2 . The Act has since been changed to apply to resort cities with a population of 10,000 or less.

3 . The resident population of Sun Valley is 550, during peak season it jumps to 8,000. At oral argument, counsel for the City pointed out that a comparable population increase for Boise would be from 100,000 to 1,500,000.