Neither the State nor any city, county, town or other municipality in this State shall ever lend its credit for any purpose whatever; nor shall any county, city or town or municipality ever issue any interest bearing evidences of indebtedness, except such bonds as may be authorized by law to provide for and secure the payment of the indebtedness existing at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of 1874, and the State shall never issue any interest-bearing treasury warrants or scrip. [As amended in 1918 - see Publisher's Notes.]
Publisher's Notes. An amendment approved in 1918 and declared in effect after the decision in Brickhouse v. Hill, 167 Ark. 513, 268 S.W. 865 (1925), made minor changes in the original section and added paragraphs authorizing bond issues for certain purposes in incorporated towns of 1,000 or more population and cities of the first and second class. For full text of the amendment, see Acts 1925, p. 1123.
The 1918 amendment was deemed superseded by a 1926 amendment, which is currently numbered as Ark. Const. Amend. 13 (See Acts 1927, p. 1210); the 1918 amendment does not appear in prior digests and compilations and is not included in the amendments to which the Secretary of State has assigned numbers.
Ark. Const. Amend. 13 essentially incorporated the first paragraph of the then-existing section and rewrote or deleted the additional paragraphs. However, Ark. Const. Amend. 62, § 11, repealed Ark. Const. Amend. 13. The Arkansas Supreme Court held, in City of Hot Springs v. Creviston, 288 Ark. 286, 713 S.W.2d 230 (1986), that Ark. Const. Amend. 62 was intended to repeal only language added to this section by Ark. Const. Amend. 13, which the court interpreted as meaning only the 11 paragraphs added by the amendment, but not the pre-existing first paragraph; however, the opinion makes no mention of the changes or additions made by the 1918 amendment. The section appears above as originally enacted in the 1874 Constitution but incorporates the changes made in the paragraph by the 1918 amendment.
The 1918 amendment made minor punctuation changes and substituted "the indebtedness existing at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of 1874" for "the present existing indebtedness."
With respect to issuance of bonds, this section may be superseded by Ark. Const. Amends. 62 and 65. See also Ark. Const. Amend. 20.