Request By:
Mr. Drewie Muncy
Martin County Attorney
Courthouse
Inez, Kentucky 41224
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Martin County React and Rescue Squad has requested the Martin Fiscal Court to pay a bill in the amount of $6200 for building materials used on their building. REACT is a nonprofit volunteer organization that has repeatedly responded to the needs of the citizens of Martin and surrounding counties in time of emergencies such as the flood, drownings, and transporting sick individuals to hospitals in the winter time when ambulances could not transport the people. We understand that it provides emergency ambulance services.
The fiscal court has requested you to seek an opinion from this office as to the legality of the fiscal court's paying for their building materials. Of course their building houses the equipment used in their operation. You wrote that such money was not included in the current budget and the fiscal court has never approved of the use of such funds for that purpose.
Obviously the expenditure of the county funds requires express statutory authorization. We are unable to find such authorization. KRS 67.083, as amended by H.B. 152 [Ch. 118, 1978 Acts, § 3], provides that the fiscal court can enact ordinances relating to ambulance services and programs for the health and welfare of the aging, and other public health facilities and services. It also provides that the fiscal court may enact ordinances in cooperation with other units of government and private agencies for the provision of public services, including but not limited to training, educational services and cooperative extension programs. See specifically KRS 67.083(3)(d) and (q). However, we do not believe those provisions expressly authorize the expenditure involved here. The provision relating to ambulance services and programs for the health and welfare of the aged anticipates programs operated directly by the fiscal court. The provision of KRS 67.083(3)(q) is expressly limited to training, educational services and cooperative extension service programs. Our analysis is based upon the requirement of the Supreme Court of Kentucky that a power exercised by the fiscal court must be expressly delegated to it by statute.