Request By:
Mr. William S. O'Daniel
Commissioner
Department for Local Government
909 Leawood Drive
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
A question has arisen concerning the interpretation of KRS 67.045(3), relating to county reapportionment of justices' districts. That subsection requires the county judge/executive to publish notice of the "planned reapportionment" in accordance with KRS Chapter 424. (Emphasis added). You ask what part of Chapter 424 applies at this point. In other words, what is the actual content of the notice?
Before we can answer, we must note the statute first provides for the filing of a petition for reapportionment. Any citizen may file it. Following notice of such filed petition, the county judge/executive must, within 60 days, in fiscal court, appoint three commissioners to reapportion the county into justices' districts. The commissioners must, within 60 days after their appointment, lay off the boundary lines of the districts and file their report in the county clerk's office. Within 20 days after filing the report, any citizen of the county may file exceptions, and the district court must fix a day, not later than 10 days after the exceptions are filed, for the trial thereof. That is the chronology of the entire process.
Literally from the above timetable, the publication relating to the process relates to the filing of the petition for reapportionment.
However, if the one-shot publication of the process is to be an effective notice to the citizens of the county, the mere publication of the fact that a petition was filed will, under the usual circumstances, not accomplish the purpose of the publication as evidenced by reading the entire statute as a whole.
It is vital that if the public is to be properly warned (and you can't expect the masses to be going around looking for KRS 67.045), they must be made directly and acutely aware of the fact, inter alia, that not later than 20 days after the filing of the commissioners' report, any citizen of the county may file exceptions to the petition for reapportionment. This is the crown jewel of the democratic process. So the mere publication of a notice that a petition for reapportionment was filed would probably with most people invoke a yawn or little interest or curiosity.
From its four corners (KRS 67.045) we gain the impression that the legislature desires the citizenry to be made directly aware of the timetable of the whole process, and by so doing any interested citizen, at the appropriate time under the timetable, may file an exception to the petition. Remember that there is only one publication. If the citizens are to be properly forewarned, the ad must mention the whole timetable, as recited above, which includes the time whithin which an exception to the petition may be filed. In departing from literalism, we are considering the general purpose of the statute, which is to provide effective or educative notice of the reapportionment process. The court has held that literal language contained in some parts of a statute in apparent conflict with the general scheme should surrender to the general purpose and intent of the legislature as gathered from all parts of the statute.
Department of Revenue v. Miller, 303 Ky. 822, 199 S.W.2d 622 (1947) 623. Under this interpretation the notice provision becomes workable and meaningful in terms of general legislative purpose.
That being the case, KRS 424.130(1)(b) applies. That subsection requires that the notice be published at least once. It may be published two (2) or more times, provided that one (1) publication occurs not less than seven (7) days nor more than twenty-one (21) days before the occurrence or event. The "occurrence or event" here would be the filing of an exception.