Mandamus will lie to compel the Attorney General to exercise his discretion, but it does not lie to control his action regarding matters within his discretion, unless his discretion has been clearly abused.
How later courts described this case
- Mandamus will lie to compel the Attorney General to exercise his discretion, but it does not lie to control his action regarding matters within his discretion, unless his discretion has been clearly abused.
- OKLA.CONST. art. 5, § 56 does not mandate a general appropriation bill and Legislature is not prohibited from enacting a separate appropriation bill for a single agency for one fiscal year
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION ON REHEARING
IRWIN, Vice Chief Justice:
On Rehearing the respondent challenges our finding that the Oklahoma Constitution, Art. 5, § 56, does not mandate a general appropriations bill. We find no reason now to alter that view. However, our holding that Attorney General Opinion Nos. 79-311 and 79-313-B are invalid and of no effect is, of course, limited to the single issue actually presented to and determined by the court.
In addition to finding HB 1140 unconstitutional in light of Okla.Const. Art. 5, § 56, Attorney General Opinion No. 79-313-B also declared a specific section of HB 1140 unconstitutional for another reason. Section 8 of HB 1140 appropriated $240,000 from the General Revenue Fund to the State Board of Education to assist in defraying the cost of rebuilding school buildings destroyed by fire in six designated school districts. Attorney General Opinion No. 79-313-B declared the Section 8 appropriation unconstitutional as a special and local law prohibited by Okla.Const., Art. 5, § 46.
Neither party placed the correctness of this additional finding at issue in this case, but instead they agreed that the Attorney General’s conclusion regarding Section 8 *1148 was not a subject in this action. Therefore, we express no view in this case on the correctness of the conclusion contained in Attorney General Opinion No. 79-313-B concerning Section 8 of HB 1140.
LAVENDER, C. J., and WILLIAMS, HODGES, HARGRAVE and BARNES, JJ., concur.
SIMMS, J., dissents.