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8 Tennessee Attorney General Reports and Opinions 1 (1977-1978)

handle is hein.sag/sagtn0170 and id is 1 raw text is: STATE OF TENNESSEE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 450 JAMES ROBERTSON PARKWAY NASHVILLE. TENNESSEE 37219 BROOKS McLEMORE ATTORNEY GENERAL & REPORTER OPINION NO. 1 TO: County Attorney DATE: June 16, 1978 RE: Local Government Reorganization QUESTION What is the effect of those provisions of Chapter 934, Public Acts of 1978, pertaining to county legislative districts in the context of the apportionment plan for Marion County. OPINION It is the opinion of this office that Chapter 934 does not-establish a statutory requirement that all county legislative districts within a particular county be equal in population; rather, we are of the view that Chapter 934 simply requires equality of representation based on population in compliance with the one man-one vote principle. ANALYSIS According to your letter, Marion County currently elects eleven (11) members to its county legislative body from five (5) districts. Eight (8) members are elected from districts 1, 2, 4 and 5, with each district electing two members. Three (3) members are elected from District 3, which is a county town district. The county town district is 50% greater in population than each of the other four dis- tricts. Specifically, you have inquired as to whether the language in Section 4 of Chapter 934 that 64members of the county legislative body shall represent substantially equal populations establishes a statutory requirement that all county legislative districts within a particular county be uniform as to population. It is a well settled principle of statutory construction that the primary purpose of statutory inter- pretation is to ascertain and give the effect to legislative intent, and the meaning of a statute is to be determined from the statute as a whole in light of its general purpose, and not from particular words in a single sentence or section of the statute. State ex rel. Bastnagel v. City of Memphis, 224 Tenn. 514, 457 S.W.2d 532 (1970). Therefore, at the outset the purpose of the statute (Chapter 934) should be examined. The primary purpose of Chapter 934, as stated in the caption and also in the preamble to the act, is to implement the recently adopted Local Government Amendment to the Tennessee Constitu- tion. Also, the General Assembly in Section 42 of the act has expressed an intent to effect the imple- mentation of the requirements of the local government amendment in an orderly manner with a mini- mum of disruption to the continunity of local government. Therefore, specific provisions of the Act implementing the changes contemplated by the Local Government Amendment should be construed in the context of these two general purposes. With respect to the county legislative body, the local government amendment specifies certain numerical limitations on the size and composition of the county legislative body, and vests in the Gen- eral Assembly the power and duty to prescribe by statute the manner of drawing county legislative dis- tricts. The numerical limitations of the local government amendment restrict the maximum size of the county legislative body to twenty-five members and that the maximum number of representatives from any county legislative district to three. However, the local government amendment itself does not contain a requirement that county legislative districts be of uniform population within a particular county.

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