Briscoe v. Clark County

Citations

• 95 Ill. 309
• 1880 Ill. LEXIS 179

Syllabus

<p>1. Compensation op county officers—clerk hire, etc. — power of county board to change them during a term of office—construction of the constitution. The 10th section of article 10 of the constitution of 1870, after requiring the county board to fix the compensation of county officers, with the amount of their necessary clerk hire, stationery, fuel, and other expenses, provides “ that the compensation of no officer shall be increased or diminished during his term of office.” This is a limitation merely, upon the power of the county board to change the salary of t.he county officer—the compensation for the personal discharge of official duty by him—during his term of office, and has no reference to the fixing of the amount to be allowed for necessary clerk hire, stationery, fuel, and other expenses, the allowances for such purposes being at all times under the control of the county board. The compensation or salary is to be fixed in advance, and can not be changed during the term of office. The expenses are to be determined from time to time by the necessity which the business of the office may develop.</p> <p>2. Fees of county officers—paying surplus into county treasury—control of county board over that subject. The county board has no authority to relieve a county officer from his duty to make regular reports of his receipts from the fees of his office, or from his duty to pay into the county treasury the excess of such receipts over his fixed salary, by any contract with the officer in respect to the expenses of the office. Such a contract, so far as it might assume to relieve the officer from such duties, would not be binding, though so far as it provided a different mode of defraying the expenses of the office from that intended by a previous order of the board, fixing the amount to be expended for such expenses, the contract would operate to do away with such previous order, and leave the matter of expenses to be adjusted upon a proper basis between the offi