Request By:
Mr. James Hite Hays
Shelby County Attorney
501 Main Street
Shelbyville, Kentucky 40065
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Question No. 1:
"When a fiscal court accepts a yearly report from a county fee officer, does this prevent that officer from being responsible to the county for any disallowable or unauthorized expenses deducted from his excess fees? "
If fiscal court disallows certain expenditures as credit against his excess fees, then the county fee officer will have to pay in such amounts, as are disallowed, to the county treasury. Of course he can litigate it. [See Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 449 (1958)] and let the courts determine it.
Question No. 2:
"What procedures are available to county government in asserting their claim for repayment of unauthorized deductions from excess fees taken by county officials, and how many years back may the county government make its claim (is there a statute of limitations) ?"
Where such officers do not make good any disallowed expenditure credits, the five year statute of limitations applies. See KRS 413.120. See OAG 74-462, copy enclosed, on this subject.
Finally, a compromise settlement with an officer, if based upon a mutual mistake, whether of fact or law, can be opened up for correction. The settlement of a controversy between knowledgeable parties as to an unliquidated claim ordinarily bars recovery of the remainder of the claim which subsequent events show that one of the parties may have been liable for. Webster County v. Vaughn, Ky., 365 S.W.2d 109 (1963).