Lloyd v. Smith

Citations

• 176 Pa. 213
• 35 A. 199
• 1896 Pa. LEXIS 1061

Syllabus

<p>Statutes — Construction—Constitutional law — Controller—Auditors.</p> <p>The act of June 27, 1895, P. L.403, creating the office of county controller in counties containing one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and abolishing the office of county auditor is constitutional.</p> <p>Constitutional law — Classification of counties — Special legislation — Municipal law.</p> <p>Local and special legislation is not necessarily unconstitutional though the list of prohibited subjects is long and comprehensive. Classification of cities with reference to their governmental machinery has been sustained as being of imperative necessity, and the principle thereby established that a law which excludes none from a class, and applies to all the members of a class equally, is valid, makes classification of counties permissible, and the presumption is that such legislation is actually classification, and not special legislation under that guise, unless it clearly transgresses the constitutional prohibition.</p> <p>Public officers — Constitutional officers — County auditors.</p> <p>The only tenable construction of sec. 1 of art. 14 of the constitution is that the county auditor is a constitutional officer only in the alternative, and that so far as the office is concerned it may be abolished at any time by the legislature, provided that the constitutional alternate, a county controller, is put in the place.</p> <p>Legislative office — Abolishment—Right of incumbent — Right of people.</p> <p>The right to an office is not the right of an incumbent to the place but of the people to the officer. An office therefore not constitutional exists by will of the legislature only, and may be abolished at any time, and the incumbent has no standing to complain : Com. v. Weir, 165 Pa. 284.</p> <p>Public officers — Overlapping terms and duties — Oounty auditor.</p> <p>The duties of auditor and controller are not identical, although the latter usually includes the former. There is no incompati