Request By:
Mr. Larry D. Noe
Taylor County Attorney
P.O. Box 15
321 East Broadway
Campbellsville, Kentucky 42718
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your question is: "Can the fiscal court, in approving an administrative code for the county, require the county budget commission to prepare a proposed budget from proposals submitted to it and divide the road maintenance money equally into six magisterial districts?" The answer is "no".
At the outset, only the county judge/executive can propose an administrative code and suggest revisions or amendments to it. KRS 67.710(2). Once he proposes the code or amendments, then the fiscal court as a body can either adopt it or reject the proposal, and start over again. KRS 68.005.
The county judge/executive must annually prepare the county budget and submit it to the county budget commission. KRS 68.240. When the commission approves the proposed budget, a copy is forwarded to the fiscal court for comment. The commission is required to amend the proposed budget, according to the desires of fiscal court. Then the proposed budget is forwarded to the state local finance officer for approval as to form and classification. KRS 68.250. Later the proposed budget adopted by the commission, and if approved by the state local finance officer, is submitted to fiscal court for adoption. KRS 68.260.
There is nothing in the budget statutes authorizing the procedure in question. Further, the code provision suggesting six different magisterial districts for purposes of accounting and budgeting violates in our opinion, KRS 68.240(2)(d), requiring " a budget unit of highways and bridges. " (Emphasis added). It is important to remember that the code cannot be in conflict with the statutes. Clearly that statute suggests a highways and bridges account, i.e., one account.
The statute, KRS 68.240(2)(d) is entirely in harmony with the case holdings to the effect that the repair and maintenance of county roads is within the sound discretion of the fiscal court as a body. Thus the fiscal court, action as a body, determines what roads are to be repaired, the nature and extent of the repair, the time of repair and method of such improvements. This simply means the county road program, in terms of projects and appropriations, is in one (1) major account and is to be considered as one (1) major budget item, not six.
Madison Fiscal Court v. Edester, 301 Ky. 1, 190 S.W.2d 695 (1945) 696.
In other words, the county's road business and account must not be broken down into several pieces or units to accomodate the various magistrates in their districts. They represent their districts, but only in meetings of fiscal court and in voting on all of the county road business as a unified whole. They have no executive authority when they get outside of fiscal court meetings. See KRS 67.080(3).
In
Thompson v. Bracken County, Ky., 294 S.W.2d 943 (1956), the fiscal court apportioned all the road funds from general and special levies among the eight magisterial districts on a percentage basis according to number of miles of countymaintained roads in each district. The road claims were paid by the treasurer as they would come out of each district. The fiscal court did not vote on the claims as required by statute. The county engineer did not certify the claims as required.
The Court of Appeals, in rejecting that kind of system of management by each magistrate in the districts, said this at page 947:
"The opportunities for fraud, mistake, and mismanagement are so obvious under the system in question as not to merit further description. The method employed lends itself to political misuse and waste of the funds. It is based on a misconception that road funds are to be used as individual magistrates may determine in their separate districts, rather than the proper use of the funds by the fiscal court as a whole for the benefit and best interests of the entire county. The statute contemplates that the fiscal court, as a body, shall examine and determine the merit of each claim and shall order its payment accordingly. In no other way can the orderly process of county government proceed."
Clearly it can be seen that road funds are not to be used as individual magistrates may determine in their separate districts, rather than the proper use of the funds by fiscal court as a whole for the benefit and best interests of the county.
Your second question is whether the fiscal court could divide road maintenance equally among the six districts. With no other criteria, the answer is "no". A county road repair program, as we said above, must be based upon several factors, which could include: condition of roads, mileage of county roads in all districts, number of people served in all the districts, etc. On its face to merely divide the money equally, without any other equitable considerations, would be arbitrary. See § 2, Kentucky Constitution.
The fiscal court indeed is one body delegated by law to deal with the business of one county and the people thereof as a whole. The fiscal court, under the law, is not simply a county judge/executive and six individual magistrates carrying on six different road programs in their county simultaneously.
We realize this procedure of fragmentation has been perhaps practiced extensively in Kentucky. But you are asking about the law, not the desired practice or custom. Such fragmentation strikes against the very root philosophy underlying the county budget system, i.e., the maintaining of a unified budget system geared to the unified approach of fiscal court to county expenditures. Thus such a county system must necessarily maintain an orderly and unified approach as required by the legislation.
In summary, the equal division of the road maintenance fund into separate magisterial district accounts and/or ledgers is prohibited by the statutes and as so declared by Kentucky's highest court. As our Commonwealth motto says, United they stand, divided they fall.