reversing the trial court’s dismissal of a mandamus complaint on preliminary objections and explaining that once the Department of Education approved reimbursable transportation costs payable to a school district, there was no discretion remaining to be exercised, and the department was mandated by statute to remit an amount to be determined by applying a mechanical formula
How later courts described this case
- reversing the trial court’s dismissal of a mandamus complaint on preliminary objections and explaining that once the Department of Education approved reimbursable transportation costs payable to a school district, there was no discretion remaining to be exercised, and the department was mandated by statute to remit an amount to be determined by applying a mechanical formula
- "[Ojnce the Department has approved the amount of reimbursable transportation costs there is no discretion left to the Department in arriving at the actual amount which must be paid to the school district. After approval, the Department is mandated by statute to remit an amount which is to be determined by applying the mechanical formula of multiplying the cost of the approved reimbursable pupil transportation incurred during the school year by the district’s aid ratio. The application of that formula does not involve any discretion but merely involves the ministerial duty of making proper computations in accordance with the directives of the statute....”
- school district’s payment of expenses by application of a statutory formula is a ministerial act
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Roberts:
The decision of the majority is bottomed on the proposition that once appellees have approved appellant’s pupil transportation costs, there is nothing further for the Department of Public Instruction to do except plug these costs into a pre-set formula and disburse the funds. I agree that these last two acts are ministerial only, and a failure to perform them would support an action of mandamus.
Of course, since approval of the costs themselves is discretionary, mandamus would not lie to compel the Department to approve the exact figures submitted by the school district. Accordingly, to withstand preliminary objections in this case it was necessary for appellants to allege in their complaint that the figures submitted to the Department by the school district had been approved. In .my view, paragraph 6 of appellant’s complaint, containing this allegation, is somewhat ambiguous. The complaint merely says that the Department "approved the reimbursable pupil transportation.” However, it never appears whether the •figures eventually approved were those originally submitted by the school district or were, in fact, altered figures ascertained by the Department.
Since the thrust of appellant’s complaint is that they have received less than they would have gotten *240 had the formula been applied to their own submitted figures, relief in mandamus must eventually depend on whether this lesser amount actually resulted from an arbitrary misapplication of the formula to appellant’s figures, or from a correct application of the formula but to some other set of figures, approved only after the Department, in its discretion, had changed appellant’s original submitted costs. If the latter situation should prove true, in my view mandamus would not be proper.
I therefore concur in the majority’s holding that preliminary objections should not have been sustained simply because the language in paragraph 6 is broad enough to be read as an allegation that the figures approved were indeed those submitted by the school district. If the Department, however, should allege that appellant’s figures were not the ones approved, then of course an issue will have been joined, the proper resolution of which may determine the eventual outcome of this litigation.
Mr. Chief Justice Bell and Mr, Justice Eagen join in this concurring opinion.