Request By:
Honorable Estill Blair, Judge
Letcher County
Whitesburg, Kentucky 41858
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Martin Glazer, Assistant Attorney General
You state that the county insurance agency has notified the county that the Workmen's Compensation Insurance will not be renewed by the present carrier and that you are required to be placed in the Kentucky Assigned Risk Plan at an increased rate, that under the Assigned Risk Plan, you will be required to pay the premium annually instead of quarterly as previously done. You also state that Letcher County does not have the funds to pay this premium in full. You state that you are the owner of Blair Insurance Agency and that you feel that your agency could write this insurance through Aetna Casualty and Surety Company. You specifically want to know whether it will be a conflict of interest if an agency owned by you should write the insurance for Letcher County considering the difficulty or impossibility of acquiring this insurance otherwise.
Regardless of the reasons deemed necessary by your County of utilizing your agency, it appears that such a procedure would run afoul of KRS 61.210(2) which provides:
"No county judge or county attorney shall, directly or indirectly, receive any benefits or emoluments from, furnish any material or other thing of value to be used in, or be interested in any contract let by the fiscal court for, the construction of any roads, bridges or parts thereof, or any other public or internal improvement."
Further, KRS 61.220 provides:
"(1) Any member of the fiscal court who becomes interested, directly or indirectly, in any contract for work to be done or material to be furnished for the county or any district thereof, or who becomes interested in any claim against the county or state shall be fined not less than five hundred (500) nor more than five thousand ($5,000) for each offense.
"(2) If any county judge or justice is, by the same act, guilty of a violation of this section and KRS 61.210, he shall be punished as provided in KRS 61.210."
While the furnishing of insurance by you to the County would not be for the construction of any roads, bridges or parts thereof, it would be a contract for work to be done for the County. This office has taken the position in OAG 65-126 (a published opinion) that no member of the fiscal court may become interested in any claims against the county or state and that a contract would eventually lead to a claim by a member of the fiscal court.
Therefore, it appears that your proposal would be in violation of the aforesaid statutes, could subject you to a fine, imprisonment and/or forfeiture of office.