Request By:
Mr. Frank H. Edelen, Jr.
Assistant Corporation Counsel
City of Ashland
P.O. Box 1839
Ashland, Kentucky 41101
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The city of Ashland, a second class city, has an assessment date of July 1 for purposes of ad valorem taxation. KRS 92.420(1). Under KRS 92.370 the city must levy its tax rate no later than April 30 of each year. The city assessor makes the city's own assessment. The city has a fiscal year of June 1 to May 31. KRS 92.020.
Your question is: How does H.B. 44, enacted in the 1979 Extraordinary Session and signed by the Governor on February 13 under an emergency clause, affect the two matters of assessment date and tax levy deadline?
The answer is that nothing in H.B. 44 changes the city's assessment date. House Bill 44 became effective on February 13, 1979. Likewise, there is nothing in H.B. 44 which changes the deadline for making the tax levy.
July, 1978, is the date of the assessment which will provide the revenue for the fiscal year of June 1, 1979, to May 31, 1980. This is true under previously enacted statutes, as mentioned above.
Section 5 (1)(a) of H.B. 44 provides that "notwithstanding any statutory provisions to the contrary, no city or urban-county government shall levy a tax rate for 1979-80 which will produce more revenue, exclusive of revenue from net assessment growth, than would be produced by application of the maximum tax rate that could have been levied in 1978-79 to the 1978-79 assessment."
Thus Section 5, which amends KRS 132.027 [city tax rates], applies specifically to the city of Ashland because in subsection (1) it expressly refers to the 1979-80 fiscal year, since it says " shall levy a tax rate for 1979-80 . . . ." (Emphasis added). But of course KRS 132.027 relates to the mechanics of formulating the legal city tax rate.
While KRS 132.027, as amended in 1979 [Ex. Sess.], includes such matter as the holding of a hearing when the proposed tax rate exceeds the compensating tax rate etc., the city will have to meet the April 30, 1979, deadline as to the tax levy.
We can find nothing in H.B. 44 suggesting an amendment by implication of the statutes relating to the assessment and tax levy dates. An amendment by implication is not favored by the courts. Fiscal Court of Jefferson Co. v. City of Anchorage, Ky., 393 S.W.2d 608 (1965).