Wallace v. Board of Supervisors

SHENK, J.

This proceeding in

mandamus

is submitted on a general demurrer to the petition filed as a return to the alternative writ. The purpose of the petition is to compel the respondent Board of Supervisors of Alameda County to take no action with reference to calling an election of a board of freeholders to prepare and propose a charter for a consolidated city and county government as prayed for in an initiative petition.

On October 22, 1934, the initiative petition was filed with the county clerk praying that an election be called for the purpose of electing said board of freeholders. The petition

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was found to have been sufficiently signed by qualified electors of the county and a special election will be called, and the expense thereof incurred for the purpose intended, unless it is the duty of the respondent board to disregard the petition.

The proponents of the petition for the election have proceeded, as noted in the petition, “pursuant to section 7%a of article XI of the Constitution”, and the only question presented is whether it is competent for the petitioning electors or the board to proceed under that section when properly construed and in the light of the following facts:

Prior to January 18, 1927, Alameda County was organized under general law. On that date a charter for the county, prepared, proposed and adopted under the authority of section 7% of article XI of the Constitution, was ratified by the legislature. (Stats. 1927, p. 2029.) While the county was so organised and operating under general law, section 7%a of article XI was added to the Constitution in 1918. That section provides in part: “Any county organized under general law, and having, at the time this section takes effect, a population of two hundred thousand inhabitants or over . . . and having within its territorial boundaries one or more incorporated cities or towns, may frame a charter for a consolidated city and county government, by causing a board of fifteen freeholders ... to be elected by the qualified electors of said county, at a special election.” Then follow in some fifteen pages (Stats. 1917, pp. 1921-1936), the procedure for the adoption of such a charter and a recital of what it is competent to incorporate therein.