Request By:
Mr. Dwight Preston
Hardin County Attorney
Public Square
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your question about the county hospital reads as follows:
"Hospital board member, appointed to the board by the magistrate for fiscal court in that district, moves out of the magistrate's district or is redistricted out of the magistrate's district, does the board member forfeit his seat on the hospital board, or may he continue out his term?"
Assuming that you refer to a county hospital the fiscal court as a body is responsible for the overall supervision of personnel and fiscal management of the county hospital. However, the fiscal court can establish a hospital board to run the hospital on a day-by-day basis administratively, so long as the fiscal court does not part with any of its supervisory authority.
Knox County Fiscal Court v. Knox County General Hospital, Inc., 528 S.W.2d 672 (1975). In the Knox County case Judge Palmore wrote that KRS 216.040 mandates that the ultimate control of a county hospital must be retained by fiscal court if it is to be operated as a county hospital.
In establishing a county hospital board, the fiscal court must act as a body. It cannot legally act through the separate and unilateral actions of the magistrates on the fiscal court. The case of
Leslie County v. Keith, 227 Ky. 663, 13 S.W.2d 1012 (1929) lays down the time honored principle that the fiscal court can only act as a body when it is in session for the purpose of taking action.
The fiscal court as a body can enact reasonable by-laws in the creation of a hospital board, including reasonable qualifications of board members, their terms, etc. It is our opinion that the courts would probably uphold a by-laws requirement that the board membership appointees be residents of the particular magisterial district for which they are appointed. In your situation if the by-laws do not contain such a residential qualification, then the dismissal of a board member who moves from his regular magisterial district would appear to be arbitrary, which arbitrary action is prohibited by § 2, Constitution. Of course, if the by-laws provide that a board member can be removed at the will of the fiscal court, instead of providing for a definite term, then his removal for any reason would be legal.