Request By:
Ms. Dora N. Henry
Estill County Court Clerk
Courthouse
Irvine, Kentucky 40336
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your questions relate to fiscal court minutes.
Question 1:
"Is it legal for the minutes of the fiscal court be hand written on a legal pad and signed by the county judge/executive and all the magistrates, and then later typed on the fiscal court order book and read aloud at the next fiscal court meeting, and then signed again by all members of the court?"
If the minutes before adjournment are publicly read by the clerk and signed by the presiding judge with approval of the other members of fiscal court who were present, we see no objection to the minutes being written out in longhand. Such longhand minutes should be filed, as the official record, to support the typed version. See KRS 67.100. The statute also requires that, before adjournment, the minutes must show by whom [the names of members] the court was held. An order book, when kept, is not a substitute for compliance with KRS 67.100, in that signing the order book after adjournment will not validate an order or resolution that was not read and signed before adjournment in conformance with KRS 67.100. Graves Co. Pub. Lib. Dist. Bd. v. Graves Co. Fiscal Court, Ky., 479 S.W.2d 27 (1972) 29. The statute does not require the keeping of an "order book", but only that such orders be read and signed in the presence of the members of the court holding such meeting. Cummings v. Pendleton County Board of Education, Ky., 305 S.W.2d 314 (1957) 316.
Question 2:
"May resolutions, leases, contracts or long motions presented to the court typed, be attached to the handwritten minutes without the clerk handwriting the above on the legal pad, but later typed on the fiscal court order book and signed at the next meeting?"
Such documents may be appropriately marked and incorporated by reference in the handwritten minutes and physically attached thereto. When the order is spread on the order book such resolutions or other documents will be copied and shown in full.