People ex rel. Blanding v. Burr

Citations

• 13 Cal. 343

Syllabus

<p>The Legislature may authorize a municipal corporation to pay claims invalid in law, but equitable and just in themselves.</p> <p>The only limitation upon the taxing power of the Legislature is the provision for equality and uniformity found in the 13th Section, of Article 4th, of the Constitution.</p> <p>The Legislature can impose a general tax upon all the property of the State, or a local tax upon the property of particular political sub-divisions, as counties, cities, and towns. The cases in which its power shall be exercised, and the extent to which the taxation in a particular instance shall be carried, are matters exclusively within its own judgment, subject to the qualifications of equality and uniformity in the assessment. And, except as especially restricted, its power of appropriation of the moneys raised, is co-extcnsive with its power of taxation. It may appropriate them to claims which have no legal obligation, and are founded only in justice. The power of appropriation which the Legislature can exercise over the revenues of the State for any purpose, which it may regard as calculated to promote the public good, it can exercise over the revenues of a county, city, or town, for any purpose connected with their present or past condition, except as such revenues may, by the law creating them, be devoted to special purposes. In creating the law imposing the tax, it can prescribe the objects to which the money raised shall he applied. It is only for the convenient administration of the government that the State is divided into counties, cities, and towns.</p> <p>The powers of a municipal corporation may be increased, restricted, or repealed, by the Legislature at will, saving only vested rights.</p> <p>The fact that the Legislature has once exercised its powers in limiting the extent of taxation in municipal corporations, under the 87th Section, of Article 4th of the Constitution, does not prevent the Legislature from again exercising its power by enlargi