Request By:
Mr. Billy Roy Shepherd
Bullitt County Jailer
Secretary/Treasurer
Kentucky Jailer's Association
Shepherdsville, Kentucky 40165
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The Kentucky county jailers are having problems in connection with the collection of their dieting fees. See KRS 64.150. The state is required to pay the dieting fee where the prisoner is charged with or convicted of violating a state statute. KRS 64.150(2). We suppose an overwhelming number of prisoners fit in that category [involving state statutes].
One problem relates to the time period within which the Department of Finance pays the dieting fees. Claims for dieting are turned in at the end of each month. It is usually around the 20th or 25th of the succeeding month that the jailers receive their dieting fees from the state.
Thus the jailers are lodging and feeding prisoners for which they receive the fees six weeks later.
Your question is whether the jailer can go to the bank and borrow money to currently operate on and pay the interest from the jailer's fees.
Since the statute contains no express provision about the time element in the payment of dieting fees [see KRS 64.150], such claims should be paid within a reasonable time, which "reasonable time" would have to be determined by the courts. It has been written that "within a reasonable time" as set out in a statute, as applied to an act to be performed, depends upon the subject, the situation of the parties and the circumstances attending the performance. A "reasonable time" means a period which is created because of some justifiable reason.
Clevenger v. Potlach Forests, Inc., Idaho, 377 P.2d 794 (1963) 799.
The Texas Court of Civil Appeals, in Meers v. Frick-Reid Supply Corp., Tex., 127 S.W.2d 493 (1939) 498, wrote that "The general conception of that which constitutes a reasonable time under the law is such length of time as may be fairly necessary, considering the nature of the duty to be performed and the circumstances surrounding the matter in hand."
Thus the factual and circumstantial aspects of a "reasonable time" are such that only the courts can resolve it.
If the jailer goes to a bank and borrows money [we know of nothing prohibiting that] to finance the jail operation until his fees come in, such a loan is purely a private loan and the jailer is personally responsible for its repayment plus interest. There is no authority for the interest being paid for out of the jailer's fees, since the loan is a private one.