Show PAYMENT BY WARRANTS The County Attorney bays Taxes May Be So Paid In conformity to the request of the county court County Attorney Murphy Mur-phy yesterday handed in his legal opinion in regard to the order in which warrants should be paid by the county treasurer That is to say shall the treasurer treas-urer be required to receive from the county collector county warrants received by him for taxes and give credit therefor when at such time other warrants of prior issue and duly registered are outstanding and not paid for the want of funds And also in regard to the question whether or not the treasurer shall accept such warrants war-rants from the collector and i the clerk may be required to charge the treasurer accordingly The opinion of the county attorney was as follows In answer to the question contained in the communication dated August 18 1 would say that in my opinion the statutory statu-tory provision that county warrants shall be paid in the order of their presentation to the treasurer has no application to warrants delivered to and received by the collector in payment of county taxes It applies only to warrants presented to the treasurer for payment in cash out of the county treasury The right of a taxpayer to pay his county tax with a county warrant war-rant is not made dependent upon the existence ex-istence of cash in the treasury sufficient to cover it at the time of such tax payment pay-ment I this were BO such a taxpayer could not sO pay his tax until such time as he could go to the treasury and have his warrant paid in cash which might not be until after his tax became delinquent delin-quent and i he could get the money from the treasury there would be very slight use it would seem in the provision provis-ion which enables payment to be made in warrants I am of opinion that any county warrant war-rant must be received by the collector in payment of any county tax of an equal amount or In part payment of any county tax of a greater amount irrespectively of the date of issue or of presentation of the warrant that when such warrants are delivered by the collector to the treasurer they should be cancelled as paidtand the collector credited and the treasurer charged with the amount The charge against the treasurer is of course balanced by thisconstructive or indirect payment of the warrant Respectfully WALTER MUHPHY County Attorney |