Request By:
Mr. John M. Blair
Coordinator
PIke County Fire Department
308 Town Mountain Road
Pikeville, Kentucky
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your questions relate to volunteer firemen in Pike County. Specifically you ask whether volunteer firemen may be required to be sworn in; and whether identification cards may be issued by the county.
If these volunteer firemen are regular members of a fire department in a volunteer fire department district, such officers should be required to take the constitutional oath [Section 228, Ky. Const.], and the oath contained in KRS 75.170. In the latter statute each member of the fire department in "fire protection districts" must take the oath set forth in KRS 75.170. KRS 75.100(2) defines "fire protection district" as a fire district organized under KRS Chapter 75. KRS 75.010 involves the establishment of a "fire protection district" or a "volunteer fire department district." A fire protection district thus embraces either a "fire protection district" or a "volunteer fire department district."
The Board of Trustees of the volunteer fire department district can require each regular fireman of that district to carry an identification card issued by the board. See KRS 75.031.
KRS 75.050 provides, inter alia, that any fire protection district created under KRS 75.010, and any municipal corporation, volunteer fire department, etc., may, through its governing body, enter into contracts with any other fire protection district, fire prevention district, municipal corporation, volunteer fire department, etc., either within the same county or within an adjoining county in an area adjacent to the boundary line between the counties, for the furnishing or receiving of fire protection services, where such fire protection is not otherwise provided by some division of government or governmental agency. Under such a contract the governmental unit or agency could require the volunteer fire department, if it is nongovernmental, to issue identification cards.