Request By:
Mr. Mark E. Gormley
Woodford County Attorney
197 South Main Street
Versailles, Kentucky 40383
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
For the fiscal court of Woodford County, your question is:
"Whether our jailer, with the approval of the fiscal court, may have two part-time matrons whose salaries and time will together approximate the equivalent of one matron? "
KRS 71.060(2) reads:
"Subject to the provisions of KRS 441.230, any jailer may appoint a respectable woman to care for and have supervision over the female prisoners in the jail, subject to the orders of the jailer. The woman so appointed shall be called jail matron and shall receive a salary to be paid in the same manner as deputy county jailers. "
Under KRS 71.060(2), the county jailer has the authority to appoint a matron to supervise female prisoners. Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958). The matron's compensation must be set by the fiscal court.
Where the employment of one person as a full time matron is not possible or feasible, it is our view that the statute implicitly authorizes the jailer to employ two part-time persons as matron, which would, time-wise and compensation-wise be equivalent to one full-time matron. Their time and salaries would clearly be separated and reflect their part-time status. In Nuetzel v. Will, 210 Ky. 453, 276 S.W. 137 (1925), Judge Thomas, for the court, wrote that the language of a statute "should receive a practical construction, and be so interpreted as to preserve and carry out the purpose in its enactment in such a manner as to remove all hindrance from its easy and simple compliance." The statute here was clearly enacted to provide all jails, outside of Jefferson County, with at least one matron, or the practical equivalent thereof.