Request By:
Honorable Roger Wm. Perry
Attorney at Law
908 Poplar Street
Benton, Kentucky 42025
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of March 11 in which you refer to OAG 77-117 concerning the qualifications of a maintenance worker in a county vocational school to run for the office of county magistrate. You indicate that he is an employe of the State Department of Education and enclose a copy of the Personnel Procedures Handbook, prepared by the Department of Education, which refers to the state merit system governing employes of the Department of Education.
OAG 77-117 was based on the assumption that the state employe in question was employed by the local school board as indicated in the last paragraph of the opinion. We were not aware that he was an employe of the State Department of Education. As you know, local school employes as well as employes of the State Department of Education are both considered state employes, however, the former are not governed by the state merit system.
The fact that the employe in question is employed by the State Department of Education would, of course, prohibit him from becoming a candidate for the office of magistrate pursuant to KRS 18.310 (4), which reads as follows:
"No employe in the classified service shall be a member of any national, state, or local committee of a political party, or an officer or member of a committee of a partisan political club, or a candidate for nomination or election to any paid public office, or shall take part in the management or affairs of any political party or in any political campaign, except to exercise his right as a citizen privately to express his opinion and to cast his vote. Officers or employes of the classified service may be candidates for the occupy a town or school district office if the office is one for which no compensation, other than a per diem payment, is provided and the election is on a nonpartisan basis."
The reference to the merit system in the personnel handbook involves the referred to statute. As requested, we are returning this handbook.
OAG 77-117 is withdrawn because of the change in the factual situation.