Request By:
Mr. Roger Williams
Jessamine County Clerk
P.O. Box 36
Nicholasville, Kentucky 40356
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The Jessamine County Fiscal Court in 1977 entered an order authorizing the county clerk to have 12 deputies whose compensation was not to exceed $800 per month payable solely out of the county clerk's fees.
You ask whether the deputies can be paid an additional cost of living compensation based on the consumer price index as is permitted for constitutional officers.
The consumer price index formula which is involved in the rubber dollar cases actually applies only to constitutional officers, that is, officers who are specifically designated in the text of the Kentucky Constitution. We are really concerned as to how the salaries of your deputies can be increased by some appropriate figure.
Commonwealth v. Hesch, Ky., 395 S.W.2d 362 (1965).
Under KRS 64.530(4) the compensation of your deputies may be reviewed and adjusted by the fiscal court each year of your term. However, the law requires that you request such increase, if you think it is needed, in writing and file it with the fiscal court. In your request for an increase for your deputies you should arrive at a specific monthly sum to be paid such deputies under the proposed increase in salary. In the letter to the fiscal court you should outline the specific reason or reasons for the increase. Then under this statute the fiscal court, in its discretion, can authorize such increase. If the fiscal court decides to enter a resolution authorizing such increase, such an increase can appropriately be listed as effective January 1, 1979. Such order should also expressly name the exact monthly sum of money to be paid each deputy in connection with the increase. The resolution should also recite, if that is the appropriate situation, that the salaries as increased are to be funded out of the fees of the office of the county clerk. This procedure, of course, can be repeated during each subsequent year of your term. In view of intregrating such matter with the total county budget, as relates to final excess fees of your office that may be paid ultimately to the county treasury, the best practice is for the constitutional officer to make the request for an increase in January of each year of his term.