State v. City of Lawrence

Citations

• 79 Kan. 234
• 100 P. 485
• 1909 Kan. LEXIS 176

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.</p> <p>1. Municipal Corporations—Functions—Local Government— Agency of the State. Municipal corporations are primarily created to perform the functions of local government, but they are also created as agencies of the state for governmental purposes.</p> <p>2. Constitutional Law—Special Act Conferring Corporate Power. So far as the prohibition of section 1 of article 12 of the constitution relates to municipal corporations, it was intended thereby to prevent the legislature from conferring upon cities and towns corporate powers to be exercised in the performance of the functions for which they were primarily created, and was not intended to restrict the power of the legislature in selecting a city as one of the agencies of the state and conferring upon it corporate powers in the accomplishment of a governmental purpose in carrying out a direct mandate of the constitution.</p> <p>3. -Determination of whether a Law is General or Special. Whether a law is general or special is to be determined by the subject-matter, and not its form. Where the legislature enacts a law in the accomplishment of a governmental purpose in carrying out an express mandate of the constitution, and the nature of the subject is such that no general law could be made to apply, it is no objection to the validity of the- law that it is special in form.</p> <p>4. -- Taxation—State University—Power to Compel a City to Issue Bonds. The legislature has the .power to compel the city where the state university is located to issue the bonds of the city in aid of the state university and to levy and collect a tax to pay such bonds; and the power to compel such city thus to furnish aid to the university includes the power to authorize it to do so after submitting the question to a vote of the electors of the city.</p> <p>t>. - Special Act Conferring Corporate Powers—Uniform Rate of Taxation. The act of the legislature of 1870 (Laws 1870, ch. 21), authorizing the city of Lawrence u