Request By:
Honorable Judson Daum, Jr.
Mayor, City of Highland Heights
175 Johns Hill Road
Highland Heights, Kentucky 41076
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in response to your letter of August 14 in which you request an opinion concerning the power of the mayor to delegate certain powers to the city administrative officer under Senate Bill 26. More specifically your questions and related facts are as follows:
"1) Can the power of control over the City Officers, in particular that of the City Clerk-Treasurer and of the Police Chief and his officers, be passed down from the Mayor to the C.A.O. Page 15, Line 13 (Section 2) seems to allow this authority to be passed down. Also Page 23, Line 12 (Section 7) allows the power to transfer duties to subordinate officers.
"2) My city council feels that the Police Department should only be under the Mayor, according to this Senate Bill. But since the Mayor is absent from the City most of the time with his employment, and the C.A.O. is present during working hours and has control of operations of the City, I feel the entire city, except Council meetings and signing of city checks should be under the C.A.O. control. By control I mean working hours of personnel, purchasing and personnel problems, not police cases and general criminal or misdemeanor acts."
KRS 83A.090 authorizes the legislative body to create the position of city administrative officer who is directly responsible to the executive authority of the city who is, of course, the mayor. Under this statute the city legislative body must first establish, pursuant to ordinance, the office in question, the qualifications and the duties and responsibilities that include but are not limited to those enumerated in this section. Subsection (2) provides that the administrative officer shall carry out all additional duties lawfully delegated by appropriate order of the mayor and shall have the same powers as the mayor in carrying out such duties.
KRS 83A.130 provides that the mayor, as executive authority of the city, shall supervise all departments of city government and the conduct of all city officers and employees under his jurisdiction.
The office of city clerk-treasurer and that of police chief must of course be established by the city legislative body pursuant to ordinance if such has not already been done since the repeal of Ch. 87 KRS governing your class of city as well as the provisions of KRS 95.700 governing the police department and KRS 95.720 governing the selection and term of office of the chief of police. In establishing these offices by ordinance, the city must provide in detail the powers, duties, compensation and regulation thereof, and the mayor, as chief executive officer, has the responsibility of seeing that such duties and responsibilities are carried out as provided in KRS 83A.130. It is likewise obvious that such supervisory duties can be delegated to the administrative officer as well as subordinate officers by executive order as provided in subsection (7) of KRS 83A.130 and 83A.090.