Weilbrenner v. Commissioners of Baltimore County

Urner, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The purpose of this suit in equity by the plaintiffs, as taxpayers, is to have the County Commissioners of Baltimore County restrained from including in their annual levy, prescribed by statute, for roads and bridges, any sum for the interest- and principal requirements of highway construction bonds previously issued. The appeal is from a decree dismissing the bill of complaint. By section 592 of article 3 of the Code of Public Local Laws of Maryland (1930), it is provided: “The County Commissioners shall annually levy upon the assessable property of Baltimore County at the time of making the county levy, not less than forty cents nor more than sixty cents on the one hundred dollars for county roads and bridges.

E'ifty per cent, of the tax so levied and collected shall be set- apart as a special road and bridge fund for the use and benefit of the election district from which it has been collected and for no other purpose. The remaining fifty per cent, together ²⁴² with all other money receivable by Baltimore County for road and bridge purposes including all money payable to Baltimore County by the State of Maryland for automobile licenses and all fines and forfeitures payable to Baltimore Cbunty and all taxes collected on stocks and bonds not apportioned or assessed to any district and formerly known as the ‘Unapportioned Fund’ shall be and constitute a fund to be known as the General Road and Bridge Fund and may be expended for any lawful road or bridge purpose anywhere in Baltimore County and for no other purpose or purposes whatsoever.” That section, in its present form, was enacted by chapter 4 of the Acts of 1920. The levy under its provisions, and the supplemental funds to which it refers, were the only means then available for the improvement of the county’s highways. By the Acts of 1922, chapter 243, the county commissioners were authorized to borrow, on bonds of the county, the sum of $750,000 annually for a period of four years, and to apply two-thirds of the amount to the purpose of “constructing and permanently improving the highways of Baltimore County, and for no other purposes.” The Acts of 1927, chapter 1, provided for the creation of a further bonded debt of $2,000,-000, at the rate of $500,000 annually for the same road purposes specified in the act of 1922.

There was thus made available, from the two loans, a fund of a half million dollars each year, from 1923 to 1931, for road improvements which would otherwise have had to await the slower process of financing from t-he taxes levied under the limitations of the statute first quoted. The interest on the bonds, and the installments of principal maturing annually as provided by the authorizing acts, have uniformly been paid out of the general road and bridge fund. The tax levies for highway purposes have averaged about forty-two cents on each $100 of assessed property value since 1923. For the present year the interest and principal payments to be made on the bonds aggregate $244,000, which is equivalent to the amount produced by approximately sixteen cents on the $100 of the road levy.

It is provided by each of the statutes under which highway ²⁴³ bonds were issued that the county commissioners shall levy each year a tax sufficient for the payment of the interest and maturing principal. The contention of the plaintiffs is that the tax for those purposes was not designed to be included in the levy from which the general road fund is derived, and hence the use of a portion of that fund for bond payments is said to involve its unwarranted diversion to that extent from its intended objects. According to this theory, it would be the duty of the county commissioners to levy a road and bridge tax of not less than