Request By:
Honorable Jean B. Mitchell
Mayor, City of Flatwoods
2411 Argillite Road
Flatwoods, Kentucky 41139
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of October 20 in which you relate that your previous mayor resigned as of September 2, 1976 and you were appointed to fill this vacancy which must be filled at the coming November election. Your question is whether or not you are entitled to serve out the remainder of the term ending on the first Monday in January of 1978 or must you give up your office immediately after the November election.
The coming November election is a regular election for the office of mayor for the ensuing four-year term beginning in January, 1978. Your appointment to fill the vacancy that occurred in September of 1976 holds throughout the remainder of the unexpired term. As a consequence, regardless of whether or not you are elected, you will not go out of office until the end of the regular term in January of 1978. Reference § 152 of the Constitution.
We might point out that if this coming election was for an unexpired term that did not end in January '78, then whoever was elected at that time would be entitled to the office immediately after receiving his certificate of election, but as we said, this is not the case with respect to the election in question.