Request By:
Mr. Frank L. Stallings, Jr.
Faulty Regent
Northern Kentucky University
Highland Heights, Kentucky 41076
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As Faculty Regent at Northern Kentucky University you have asked the Office of the Attorney General to advise you as to whether or not you are a voting member of the Board of Regents. In your letter you noted that in KRS 164.320, headed "Members of board of regents; appointment; term; vacancies; oath," the words "nonvoting faculty member" appear and yet KRS 164.289, headed "Faculty member's power to vote," provides just the opposite with language stating the faculty member "shall have the right to vote on all matters except that of faculty compensation." It is our opinion the provisions of KRS 164.289 clearly prevail.
In an opinion from this office in 1972, OAG 72-269, copy attached, prior to the effective date (June 16, 1972) of the provisions of Senate Bill 41 as amended, passed by the 1972 General Assembly, it was concluded that "the Legislature intended to give the faculty members-trustees and regents a voice in the governing of state-supported institutions of higher learning and proscribed their voting only on assigning faculty salaries." The provision in support of this conclusion was found in Section 6 of Senate Bill 41 which was to create a new section of KRS Chapter 164 and was subsequently codified as KRS 164.289. This statutory section reads as follows:
"Notwithstanding any other provision of KRS Chapter 164, the faculty member of any governing board of any institution of higher education supported in whole or in part by state funds, whether or not described as nonvoting, shall have the right to vote on all matters except that of faculty compensation."
The intent of this section, as stated in the prior opinion of this office, is clear.
It should be noted, if for no other reason than to reflect on the vagaries of the actions of the General Assembly, that in Senate Bill 41, the designation of a "non-voting" member of the student body was deleted from the language of KRS 164.320 while no change was made in this statutory section to delete the references to "non-voting member of the teaching faculty. " It was only through the addition of Section 6 to Senate Bill 41, later codified as an entirely separate statutory section, KRS 164.289, as discussed above, that the voting status of a faculty member on a governing board was addressed. By so doing, the General Assembly created the "conflicting" language which prompted your request for this opinion.
We trust that viewed in light of the above, there will not persist any misunderstanding of the fact that faculty regents do have the right to vote on all matters before a board of regents save and except that of faculty compensation.