Request By:
Ms. Barbara M. Williams
State Librarian
Department of Library and Archives
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By William S. Riley, Assistant Attorney General
In your recent letter to Mr. Jim Dickinson, Assistant Attorney General, two questions are asked in connection with House Bill 44 passed by the 1979 Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly.
If a county library district's voted rate is lowered by vote as outlined in KRS 173.610, would the "hold harmless" provision in House Bill 44 still apply? If not, how would the compensating rate be figured, as it is based on the income received in the previous year?
KRS 173.610 provides that the tax rate for a public library district may be increased or decreased by submission to the voters of the district at a general election and approved by a majority of the votes cast on the issue. KRS 132.010(6) defines library tax rate to mean that rate which, when rounded to the next higher one tenth of one cent ($ .001) per hundred dollars ($100) of assessed value and applied to the current year's assessment of the property subject to taxation by a taxing district, excluding new property and personal property, produces an amount of revenue approximately equal to that produced in the preceding year from real property. However, in no event shall the compensating tax rate be a race which, when applied to the total current year assessment of all classes of taxable property, produces an amount of revenue less than was produced in the preceding year from all classes of taxable property.
KRS 132.023 provides that notwithstanding any statutory provisions to the countrary, no taxing district, other than the state, counties, school district, cities and urban-county governments, 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. In succeeding years, no taxing district other than state, counties, school district, cities and urban-county governments shall levy a tax rate which will produce more revenue, exclusive of revenue from net assessment growth, than would be produced by application of the tax rate that was levied in the preceding year to the preceding year's assessment, except for a taxing district which has been authorized to levy a tax and has not yet levied any tax rate.
The answer, therefore, to your question is that the compensating tax rate would be computed on the rate passed by the voters of the county library district, whatever that rate may be for the previous year.