Request By:
Mr. Harold E. Barnes
Cumberland County Judge/Executive
P.O. Box 756
Burkesville, Kentucky 42717
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Recently you appointed your secretary as deputy county judge/executive. The fiscal court voted a raise for her, to be paid by the county. She is presently being paid by the CETA program.
You ask if your secretary can be legally paid by CETA and also have added income from being deputy county judge/executive without any conflict of interest. It is our understanding that for her work as deputy county judge/executive she would be paid a salary out of the county treasury. See KRS 67.711.
The payment of administrative costs from CETA funds is permitted by 29 U.S.C.A. § 843(b). Such administrative costs can include the payment for the services of your secretary in connection with her work on CETA matters. Now as concerns any conflict of interest, if your secretary as deputy county judge/executive were to take over as county judge/executive in your absence, then she in effect would be the immediate suprvisor over herself. The situation would produce a conflict of interest. Since in such situation the two jobs being subordinate and interfering with each other, it would induce a presumption that both jobs could not be executed with impartiality and honesty.
Hermann v. Lampe, 175 Ky. 109, 194 S.W. 122 (1917) 126. This situation would produce a common law incompatibility.
Next your ask, assuming there is a conflict of interest, whether you could so define and restrict her duties, while acting in your absence as the county judge/executive, concerning the CETA program. In other words, you have in mind so restricting her duties in connection with the CETA program. The answer is that regardless of your placing certain restrictions on her work as deputy county judge/executive filling in for you, the point is that holding the two jobs would still create a common law incompatibility.
Now if your secretary is authorized to be a secretary in connection with CETA matters only, and if you in writing restricted your secretary, when acting as county judge/executive in your absence, in connection with not acting on CETA matters in any particular, then it would appear that there would be no common law incompatibility.