§ 23-1-5 — [Indebtedness in excess of appropriations prohibited;

exceptions.] Every officer, board, body or agency or any member thereof, empowered to expend any public money or to direct the expenditure thereof, or to contract indebtedness against or in view of specific appropriations, is hereby prohibted [prohibited] from making any contract, incurring any expense, or contracting any liability against this state, or any public fund thereof, which shall make, tend to make or contemplate any excess of expenditure beyond the terms of the laws authorizing expenditures by them, or either of them, or under their direction; and it shall be unlawful for any trustee, superintendent, warden or other officer of any of the educational, penal, charitable or other institutions of this state, who, under the laws, has authority or may be vested with authority to purchase supplies, employ servants or assistants, contract indebtedness, or to do any act contemplating the expenditure of public moneys, to contract any indebtedness in behalf of such institutions or ostensibly against the state on account of such institutions in excess of the appropriations made for the maintenance and support thereof; but in respect to the penitentiary, the asylum for the insane, the reform school, the institute for the blind, the miners' hospital and the deaf and dumb asylum, if the specific appropriations therefor shall have become exhausted, food and clothing for the inmates thereof may be purchased on the credit of the state.

Legislative History

Laws 1912, ch. 69, § 1; Code 1915, § 5158; C.S. 1929, § 130-1308; 1941