The case comes to this court for a review of the decision of the lower court in sustaining the demurrer to the complaint. But one reason is alleged in the complaint why the charter amendment in question is invalid. Plaintiff urges that it is repugnant to Article IV, Section 20, of the Constitution of Oregon, which provides that — “Every act shall embrace but one subject, and matters properly' connected therewith, which subject shall be expressed in the title. * * ”
It is contended on behalf of defendants that the provisions of Article IV, Section 20, of the state Constitution, have no. application to charter amendments enacted by the legal voters of a municipality, nor do
1, 2. It is, however, unnecessary to decide whether the section of the Constitution referred to is applicable to such proceeding or not, as according to our view the title of the act, and the ballot title, and the act amending the charter of Seaside, embraced but one subject and matters properly connected therewith. This subject is expressed in the title of the act and in the amendatory act. In Wagoner v. City of La Grande, 89 Or. 192 (173 Pac. 305), the title of the act was “An Act to amend the charter of the City of La Grande, in Union County, State of Oregon,” and did not in any way indicate the nature of the proposed amendment. In the amendment of the charter of the City of Seaside by the legal voters, now under consideration, the subject of the act is the amendment of Section 22 of the charter of the City of Seaside. This is followed by a plain and concise statement of the purport of the amendment, as will be observed from the ballot title. There is no authority that we have discovered which holds that the legal voters of a municipality are required by the Constitution to vote separately upon each different provision of a proposed municipal charter, or an amendment thereto. Such a requirement would render it practically impossible, or at least exceedingly difficult' and cumbersome, to enact a city charter. There are many provisions usually contained in' such an instrument. To hold that there should be one
3. The authorities and cases cited and relied upon by plaintiff such as 21 Am. & Eng. Enc. of Law, page 47, and State ex rel. v. Allen, 186 Mo. 673 (85 S. W. 531), are where the courts were considering the execution or application of powers conferred upon municipalities. In the present case we have to deal with an enactment of a charter authority conferring a power upon the council of the City of Seaside. The council is not compelled by the charter to execute the power conferred nor issue the bonds for the purpose of making the city improvements. That matter is left to the city council, and in the exercise of such authority it is fairly to be presumed that the members of that body would be responsible to the will of the people of the city. In the enactment of charter provisions by the electors of the municipality, pertaining strictly to municipal affairs, they exercise a power reserved and conferred directly to them by the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, and Article
In speaking of the subject or scope of .an act, Judge Sutherland, in his work on Statutory Construction, Volume 1 (2 ed.), Section 117, says:
“There is no constitutional restriction as to the scope or magnitude of the single subject of a legislative act. One to establish the government of the state embraces but a single subject or object, yet it includes all its institutions, all its statutes. The unity of such an act, covering the multiform concerns of a commonwealth, is the congruity of all the details as parts of one ‘stupendous whole,’ of one government. That is the grand subject of such a statute or system of laws; it is equally the object of all its varied titles of chapters and sections.”
The charter amendment in question conferred authority upon the officials of the City of Seaside to issue bonds in a proper manner for municipal improvements and subject the property, liable to taxation within the city, to the payment thereof. ■
There was no error of the trial court in sustaining the demurrer to the complaint.
The judgment of the lower court will therefore be affirmed. Affirmed.