People ex rel. McMillan v. Board of Supervisors

The sole question in this case is whether a municipality which has issued bonds pursuant to the provisions of law, in aid of a railroad corporation, is entitled to the fund or any portion thereof, arising from the payment of taxes by the company on an assessment upon its property within the limits of such municipality, where the taxes thus paid were assessed upon the property of the railroad company subsequent to the time when the bonds issued by the municipality had matured and been paid in full by it. The bonds mentioned in this record were issued under the authority- of chapter 433 of the Laws of 1866, as amended by chapter 377 of the Laws of 1867, both acts relating to the construction of the Southern Central Bailroad and both being passed for the purpose of facilitating the construction of that road.

The towns claim the benefit of the moneys paid for taxes upon the property of the railroad within their respective borders after the payment of the town bonds, because as they allege, the provisions of § 4 of chapter 907 of the Laws of 1869, as amended by chapter 283 of the Laws of 1871, so direct. The bonds of all the different towns were made payable within twenty years from their issue, some of them being payable at the expiration of nine, and the longest at the expiration of seventeen years from that time. The act, chapter 433 of the Laws of 1866, under which, as amended by the act of 1867, the bonds were issued, provided that the bonds should be issued for a term not exceeding thirty years. These two special acts relating to the Southern Central Bailroad contained no provision for the payment to the towns of the amount of the taxes collected from the railroad company upon its property within the towns respectively. Assuming that the provisions of the act of 1869, as amended by that of 1871, cover the bonds issued under the acts specially applicable to the Southern Central Bailroad. the respondents claim the right of the towns to the payment of the taxes spoken of, for thirty years after the issuing of the bonds.

The material portion of the amended act of 1871, § 1, Under which this claim is made, reads as follows: * * * “All taxes, except school and road taxes, collected for the next thirty years, or so much thereof as may be necessary in any town, village or city, on the assessed valuation of any railroad in said town, village or city, for which said town, village or city has issued or shall issue bonds to aid in the construction of said railroad, shall be paid over to the treasurer of the county in which said town, city or village lies. It shall be the dntv of said treasurer, with the money arising from taxes levied and collected as aforesaid, which has heretofore been or shall hereafter be paid to

The claim of the respondents is founded upon that portion of the act which provides that “All taxes * * * collected for the next thirty years * * on the assessed valuation of any railroad in said town * * * shall be paid over to the treasurer of the county,” etc. The respondents completely ignore the balance of the section, which provides what shall be done by the county treasurer with the moneys thus collected. The resolution which has been passed by the board of supervisors is not warranted by any provision of the statute. The resolution directs the county treasurer to forthwith place a certain named sum. to the credit of the town. The statute provides for the county treasurer making a certain disposition of the funds raised by taxation from the railroad property, and it is never placed to the credit of the town in the manner provided for in the resolution adopted by the board.

The authorities of a town have no right under this act to divert or appropriate these taxes for other purposes. Bridges v. Supervisors., etc., 92 N. Y., 570 ; Matter of Clark v. Sheldon, 106 id., 104-110; 8 St. Rep., 537 . The moneys never come into the hands of the county treasurer for any other purpose than that mentioned in the section and they must be held and invested in' the mode directed. It is absurd to provide for payment of money to a county treasurer to be expended by him for the benefit of a town by the purchase of its bonds, which it has already paid in full -and cancelled. It is equally absurd to provide for the investment by such county treasurer of such taxes in certain other classes of bonds in order to form a sinking fund for the payment of bonds already paid in full. And yet the section provides for only these two dispositions of the moneys arising from these taxes, and the treasurer is at liberty to make no other. The disposition provided for is impossible in this case, because there are no bonds outstanding, and it was to constitute a _ fund for their payment that the disposition of the taxes was provided for in the statute.

The simple reading of the statute shows that this is the true

It is, therefore, not to be doubted that the direction that the taxes for thirty years should be paid to the county treasurer, when read in connection with the whole section, means and was -intended to mean that the taxes should beso paid during the period of the running of the bonds to maturity.

Mow, assuming that the acts of 1869 and 1871 are applicable to the bonds issued under the special acts, which is what the respondents claim, we must at the same time keep the purpose of the general acts in view, and the language used therein must be viewed with reference to the whole subject matter upon which the enactment is to operate. When thus regarded, it is seen that the direction to pay the taxes for thirty years is not a purely arbitrary perod of time selected by the legislature without particular purpose, but that it obviously has reference to the period when the bonds spoken of in the same act would necessarily mature. It is, we think, plain from a perusal of the whole language of the acts upon this subject that the purpose was to provide this aid to the towns only during the period when the bonds were outstanding and by the terms of the acts not payable. This purpose is to be attributed to the act when applying this provision to bonds issued under special acts and payable in less than thirty years from their date. In no case, however, could such payments be made after the expiration of thirty years even if bonds were still outstanding. We are aware of no principle in law or equity by reference to which a party who is the principal debtor can be regarded as subrogated to the rights of his creditor by the payment of the debtor’s own debt at-the time it matures and according to his promise. The fact that during some portion of the time of the running of the bonds the town had the right to call upon the county treasurer to expend the taxes spoken of for the benefit of the town, as provided for in the statute, and neglected to enforce such right for more than six years after the last taxes were collected, prior to the payment of the bonds, can furnish no ground for the application of any principle of subrogation. It has also been said in some of the reported cases that the act itself appropriates the moneys to the purposes mentioned therein, and the statement is unquestionably correct. The appropriation is made, however, only during the time there are bonds outstanding, and subsequent to that time there is no appropriation because there are no bonds to be paid.

The orders of the general and special terms should be reversed and the mandamus granted in regard to all cases where the

All concur.