Board of School Trustees of Washington City Administrative Unit v. Benner

Seawell, J. The defendant does not question that the budgets with which this review is concerned were made and approved in strict conformity with the law. He does challenge their conclusiveness as instruments for the control of expenditures referred to their authority. Under the circumstances of this case, it is argued that the budget must yield to what defense counsel regards as a superior principle of law: The *571 “equality” and “equity” which would confine disbursements for current expense within the city administrative unit to the per capita outlay experienced in the county administrative unit. As far as the argument discloses, the defendant bases his action in withholding from the plaintiff the funds allocated in the 1942-43 budget almost altogether on chapter 136, section 178, Public Laws of 1923, which he quotes as follows : “The County Board of Education shall allow for current expense, except as otherwise provided herein, the same per capita ' amount per pupil enrolled for the previous school year to the special charter districts that is allowed to all other schools of the County.” . . . “The County Board of Education shall allow for capital outlay the same per capita amount per pupil enrolled for the previous school year to the special charter district that is allowed to all other schools.” . . . “Said Board shall allow for the debt service fund the same per capita amount per pupil enrolled for the previous school year to the special charter district and districts voting bonds or borrowing from the County Board of Education for said building purposes that is allowed to all other schools of the County: provided, the amount allowed for any year shall not exceed the actual debt service need of said school district in any year.” To determine what parts of the 1923 School Code now stand unre-pealed would doubtless require expert and studious attention, but the part of the statute quoted — if it could in any way affect the issue raised here, which is not conceded — is obviously inapplicable to the present type of school administration and is supplanted by the provisions of the current law. In 1923, and for many years afterward, the basic support of the six months school term came from county taxation — largely from property taxes, supplemented by a State-provided equalization fund. The special charter districts were not strictly regarded as part of the public school system —Frazier v. Commissioners, 194 N. C., 49, 38 S. E., 433—but were included in the fiat of chapter 562, Public Laws of 1933, section 4, which abolished them along with all other districts of whatsoever type for purposes of administration (Bridges v. Charlotte, 221 N. C., 472, 476, 20 S. E. [2d], 825), and the present type of administration was substituted. However, the principle upon which county-wide taxes were apportioned under the earlier law is fundamentally just and is preserved in the current School Machinery Act, which, after successive amendments (see Public Laws of 1935, 1937, 1939 and 1941)’, reads as follows : “All county-wide current expense school funds shall be apportioned to County and City Administrative Units monthly and it shall be the duty of the County Treasurer to remit such funds monthly as collected to each Administrative Unit located in said county on a per capita enrollment *572 basis. County-wide expense funds shall include all funds for current expenses levied by the Board of County Commissioners in any county to cover items for current expense purposes and including also all fines, forfeitures, penalties, poll and dog tax and funds for vocational subjects. All county-wide debt service funds shall be apportioned to County and City Administrative Units at the time of collection and when available shall be expended in the same manner as are county-wide current expense school funds.” The budget, an indispensable device where governmental agencies are required to estimate the needs for public expenditure and make funds available for the objects of support, has,, we think, a more important function, and a more definite authority, in financial control than the defense concedes it to have. The budgets under attack are not merely tentative, informative, advisory; when prepared and approved by the successive authorities to whose consideration they are referred, the budgets become to all intents and purposes appropriations from available funds to be applied to the objects' specifically named. The “equities” and “equalities” of distribution — which the defendant strongly insists should be preserved — are determined in that forum and at that time — under legal procedure. Upon the finality of that determination, the law sets its seal and predicates the conduct of further administration, prescribing duties which are definite, ministerial and mandatory. When the budget is perfected by approval, the power of the various authorities instigating, adopting and approving it is functus officio — it is a task performed — and neither these officials, nor any others in their stead, are clothed with the power of budgetary control, which might be invoked to modify its terms. The budget is based on reasonably predictable factors and it has not been -thought necessary in the course of administration to provide further niceties of adjustment, except that the law itself in particulars now under consideration provides that excesses over the budgetary needs shall be charged against the allotment of the succeeding year, which in itself negatives the theory advanced by the defendant. The law elsewhere provides a measure of review where disputes have arisen between the proponents of the budget and those called upon to adopt or approve it, respecting its adequacy in certain respects; and doubtless budgets which violate the terms of the law might, under proper conditions, be made the subject of court review. But that subject is foreign to the issue in this case. Certainly, with respect to the issue here, whether we refer decision to the authority of the budget or to the positive terms of the law, there could be no ambiguity. Under the statute above quoted, it became the duty of the defendant to apportion all county-wide current expense school *573 funds to the county and city administrative units monthly and to remit the same on a per capita enrollment basis. It is not always wise for the Court to attempt a justification of a law wbicb is clearly within the legislative privilege. It must be observed, however, that the theory of the defendant, if adopted and put into execution, would cause the utmost confusion and result in the very injustice which he seeks to avoid. The indebtedness in the Washington City Administrative Unit was incurred largely in the support of the six months school term — a duty recognized as that of the State and vicariously performed by the county. In a great many taxing districts, similar indebtedness has been taken over by the county upon that principle. Hickory v. Catawba County, 206 N. C., 165, 173 S. E., 56; Reeves v. Board of Education, 204 N. C., 74, 167 S. E., 454, where pertinent statutes are discussed. The Washington City Administrative Unit cannot, under the law, he penalized by the withdrawal or withholding of its quota of county-wide taxes available for that purpose while the indebtedness is still a burden of that area. The judgment is Affirmed.