Mayor of Easton v. County Commissioners

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. An Act of 1920, chapter 25, since embodied in article 21, section 233, of the Code of Public Local Laws, provided that the County Commissioners- of Talbot County should “pay annually to the Mayor and Council of Easton, Talbot County, the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars, ($2,500.00), out of the county taxes levied upon the property within the limits of the town of Easton, in said county, to be disbursed by the Mayor and Council of Easton for the permanent improvement of the streets and road beds in said town of Easton, or to be applied toward the payment of any bonded indebtedness that may be incurred by the said Mayor and Council of Easton for the permaneht improvement of the streets and road beds of said town.” The town was required to furnish the county commissioners each year an itemized statement, with vouchers, showing the expenditure of at least that amount of money for the purposes stated, and the money would then be payable to the town. That amount of money was expended on its streets and road beds in the years 1935 and 1936, as well as in other years, and the fact of the expenditures was duly shown to the commissioners, but the commissioners declined to pay the $2,500 for those years because they construed an Act of 1933, chapter 425, continued in force by an Act of 1935, chapter 465 (Code Pub. Gen.

Laws, art. 89B) to suspend the requirement in the Act of 1920. Disputing this construction, the town brought this suit, a verdict for the commissioners was directed by the trial court, and from the judgment entered accordingly the appeal is taken by the town. ³³⁷ The Act of 1933, continued by the Act of 1935, was an act concerning expenditures of the special fund known as the “One and One-half Cent Lateral, County and Municipal Road Gasoline Tax Fund.” It provided that the remainder of that fund, after the state treasurer should have paid three-tenths to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, should be credited to the State Roads Commission, and should be allocated by it to the counties in the proportion which the public road mileage of the several counties bears to the entire road mileage in the counties of the state, for the construction of lateral roads as a part of the State Roads system; for the construction, reconstruction, and maintenance of county roads or the streets of incorporated towns, and in connection therewith to build or maintain bridges on those roads and streets, and for the payment of interest or matured debt on bonds issued by the counties or municipalities ; and for these purposes authority was given for the transfer of employees and equipment of the counties for road work to the State Roads Commission. There was added a provision for expenditure of part of the two cent gasoline tax imposed under the provisions of the Code of Public General Laws, art. 56, sec. 212. And then followed a provision the effect of which is the particular subject of dispute, section 7F, added by section 2 of the