Request By:
Mr. Edward LaFontaine
Director
Division of Aeronautics
Department of Transportation
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You raise the question as to whether or not a justice of the peace on fiscal court can serve as a member of a county air board.
Where the air board is established by a county, the air board members are appointed by the county judge/executive under KRS 183.132.
The critical point involves KRS 183.132(10), which provides in part that:
"No board member shall hold any official office with the appointing authority. " (Emphasis added).
The question is: Who is the "appointing authority" as relates to appointing air board members?
As we mentioned earlier, KRS 183.132(3)(b) provides that "If the air board is established by a county, such members shall be appointed by the county judge/executive. That statute was last basically amended in 1964 [in 1976 (Ex. Sess.) Ch. 20, § 6, "County judge" was changed to "county judge/executive"]. However, under a later statute, enacted in 1976 (Ex. Sess.) [Ch. 20, § 3], KRS 67.710(8), the county judge/executive is required to nominate persons for appointment on various boards and commissions as may be established by fiscal court, law, or ordinance, subject to the approval of fiscal court. Since the two statutes [KRS 183.132(3)(b) and 67.710(8)] are in irreconcilable conflict, we ruled in OAG 78-746, copy enclosed, that the later statute, KRS 67.710(8), must control. See Butcher v. Adams, 310 Ky. 205, 220 S.W.2d 398 (1949) 400. Thus under that construction the county judge/executive must first nominate a person to be an air board member, and the fiscal court as a body must then either accept or reject the nomination.
It is our opinion that, since the justice of the peace in question is on the fiscal court, and since the fiscal court is an "appointing authority" under KRS 67.710(8) and for the purposes of KRS 183.132(10), the justice of the peace in question is not eligible to be an air board member in this situation. The prohibition of KRS 183.132(10) clearly applies here.
In OAG 76-257 we concluded that a mayor of a fifth class city could appoint a member of the city council to serve on the city-county air board. However, the distinguishing fact there was that the city council member did not hold an office with the appointing authority, since the "appointing authority" was only the mayor. See KRS 183.132(3)(a).