Citation Numbers: 69 Op. Att'y Gen. 14
Judges: BRONSON C. La FOLLETTE, Attorney General
Filed Date: 1/29/1980
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 7/6/2016
ED JACKAMONIS, Speaker Wisconsin State Assembly
As chairman of the Assembly Committee on Organization you have asked whether sec. 120.50, Stats., violates the one person, one vote principle because it weights the votes of a school district fiscal board on the basis of the equalized valuation of property.
In my opinion there is no constitutional violation by the weighted voting.
The board exercises fiscal control over a school district whose jurisdiction includes component municipal units of government. Sec. 120.50(1), Stats. The fiscal board exercises responsibilities in respect to joint city school districts. See
secs.
The members of the board are not elected by the voters to serve on the board. Rather, they are ex officio members by reason of their popular election to offices in the component municipalities, or they are designees of such elected officers. Sec. 120.50(2), Stats. The weighting of the voting rights on the board is based on the equalized valuation of property within the respective component municipalities and is set forth in sec. 120.50(2), Stats., as follows:
(am) Each town chairman or designee of the chairman and village president shall have one vote for each full $200,000 of equalized valuation and remaining major fraction thereof of the school district within his or her town or village, but in no case may a town chairman or village president have less than one vote.
(b) Each mayor of a city having territory which lies within a city school district operated by another city shall have one vote for each full $200,000 of equalized valuation and remaining major fraction thereof of the school district within his city, but in no case shall the mayor have less than one vote.
(c) The aldermen of the city operating the city school district shall have one vote for each full $200,000 of equalized valuation and remaining major fraction thereof of the school district within the city. Each alderman present at a meeting of the fiscal board shall have the number of votes determined by dividing the total number of votes to which the aldermen are entitled by the total number of aldermen present at such meeting.
This method of weighting the votes was established by ch.
The court in Zawerschnik did not explain in detail the basis for its conclusion. But since the fiscal board essentially decides how much money is to be spent and imposed on the local taxpayer, it is not unreasonable to conclude that voting strength should be in proportion to the taxpayer burden.
Zawerschnik, however, preceded the evolution of the one person, one vote principle. If that principle is applicable here, two other considerations now must be examined: (1) taxpayers in more populous and poorer property areas have relatively reduced voting strength; and (2) to sustain such vote dilution the state must show that it has a compelling interest. To show that the plan is not unreasonable is insufficient.
The one person, one vote principle is embodied in the equal protection clause of the
Under this principle states may not draw lines on the basis of wealth, see Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections,
If the one person, one vote principle is applicable, it is unlikely that classifications on the basis of place of residence or wealth could ever meet the required burden for the Court has compared both criteria to classifications on the basis of race.Reynolds,
The question whether the one person, one vote principle is applicable depends on whether the right to vote in an election is involved. The principle concerns "the right to vote in an election." Hadley v. Junior College Dist. of Metro. Kansas CityMo.,
In my opinion a fiscal board is not an elected body within the meaning of the one person, one vote principle. Rather, its membership being ex officio, it is a statutorily appointed body not subject to the one person, one vote principle.
In Sailors v. Board of Education of County of Kent,
There is a sense, of course, in which the choice of fiscal board members "involves an election" in as much as only those who have been popularly elected to certain offices are ex officio members of the fiscal board. But in that sense, an election also was "involved" in Sailors because the members of the county school board were chosen by the designees of persons who had been elected. Further, under sec. 120.50(2)(am), Stats., towns are represented on the fiscal board by *Page 18 the chairman "or designee of the chairman," and the voting strength of absent aldermen is distributed among the aldermen present under sec. 120.50(2)(c), Stats. Thus, in Wisconsin there is no election to the fiscal board. The fiscal board simply is composed of certain persons elected to other offices, or their designees.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court faced a similar situation in theWest Milwaukee case. The court upheld the composition of district boards of vocational education. These members were appointed by elected officials of the component units of government. The court said that the requirement of Wis. Const. art.
In contrast to cases like Sailors and West Milwaukee, where there was no election to the board in question, the one person, one vote principle was applied where trustees of a junior college district were directly elected by the people from component districts. In Hadley the selection of members from separate districts required that each district be established on a one person, one vote basis.
Sailors left open the question whether a popular election was required for legislative functions.
Accordingly, it is my opinion that the one person, one vote principle is not applicable to the weighted voting of a fiscal board. As a result, the decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Zawerschnik v. Joint County School Comm.,
BCL:CDH
Salyer Land Co. v. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District , 93 S. Ct. 1224 ( 1973 )
Hill v. Stone , 95 S. Ct. 1637 ( 1975 )
Reynolds v. Sims , 84 S. Ct. 1362 ( 1964 )
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections , 86 S. Ct. 1079 ( 1966 )
Sailors v. Board of Ed. of Kent Cty. , 87 S. Ct. 1549 ( 1967 )
Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15 , 89 S. Ct. 1886 ( 1969 )
Village of West Milwaukee v. Area Board of Vocational, ... , 51 Wis. 2d 356 ( 1971 )
Zawerschnik v. Joint County School Committee , 271 Wis. 416 ( 1955 )
State Ex Rel. City of La Crosse v. Rothwell , 25 Wis. 2d 228 ( 1964 )
Hadley v. Junior College District of Metropolitan Kansas ... , 90 S. Ct. 791 ( 1970 )