Request By:
Mr. Thomas E. Morris
Christian County Clerk
Courthouse
Hopkinsville, Kentucky 42240
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
In 1974, acting pursuant to the Home Rule Act, KRS 67.083, the Christian County Fiscal Court enacted a "pooling" of fees of county officers monthly in the county general fund, and directed the county treasurer to pay allowed expenses of each office from the general fund and to write the payroll for each office.
Your question: "Under the Home Rule Act does the fiscal court have the authority to set salaries, grant or deny raises, hire and fire deputies, and make general decisions pertaining to the county court clerk's office, since he is a constitutional officer?"
Any salary or compensation adjustment for the county clerk and salaries for deputies, payable out of the county treasury must be set by the fiscal court pursuant to KRS 64.530, notwithstanding the fact that the legislature has established the clerk's maximum compensation in KRS 64.527. That maximum for 1977 is $17,576.64. But the permissive setting of a salary or salary adjustment out of the county treasury is a prerogative of the fiscal court. Commonwealth v. Hesch, Ky., 395 S.W.2d 362 (1965).
The hiring or firing of the deputy clerks is a prerogative only of the county clerk, who must observe the number of deputy positions established by fiscal court pursuant to KRS 64.530. The actual individuals who are hired or fired are determined only by the county clerk. The Home Rule statute, KRS 67.083, does not give the fiscal court general supervisory control over the deputies of the county constitutional officers. See Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958).
Next, you ask whether the deputies of the county clerk are employees of the county clerk or employees of the county. They are employees of the county clerk as relates to the hiring and firing of specific individuals appointed as deputy county clerks and as relates to their being subject to the administrative control of the county clerk. Cf. KRS 179.110, providing for county road employees who are directly under the supervisory control of the fiscal court. Moore v. Campbell, 163 Ky. 646, 174 S.W. 49 (1915). Since the act of the deputy clerk may be said to be the act of the principal or county clerk, it is important that this basic autonomy of the county clerk be maintained. The statutes reflect that principle. See KRS 61.035. If a county clerk is to be responsible for the acts of his deputies, then he should have the power to hire and fire specific individual deputy clerks. We see nothing in KRS 67.083 which would cut across these lines of the clerk's authority.