Request By:
Mr. David R. Choate
Clinton County Attorney
216 Cumberland Street
Albany, Kentucky 42602
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You write about H.B. 378 (1982) purporting to allow an additional expense account for county magistrates.
KRS 64.258 provides that the fiscal court may pay to each justice of the peace a sum not to exceed $100 per month for office expenses.
KRS 64.530(6), as amended by H.B. 378, provides in part that justices of the peace may receive no more than three thousand six hundred dollars ($3,600) annually or $300 per month as an expense allowance for serving on committees of the fiscal court.
It is our opinion that KRS 64.530 establishes a maximum expense allowance for magistrates serving on fiscal courts of $300 per month, and serving on committees of fiscal court, notwithstanding the maximum allowance of $100 in KRS 64.258. Thus where the justices of the peace in a county are receiving $100 pursuant to KRS 64.258, the fixing of a $300 per month expense allowance under KRS 64.530(6) would mean that such justices of the peace would be receiving a maximum expense allowance of $400 per month. Since KRS 64.258 was not amended in 1982, we must assume the General Assembly knew about it in amending KRS 64.530(6). Thus we believe KRS 64.258 and 64.530(6) should be harmonized, which we believe we have done, under the doctrine of pari materia. Cawood v. Coleman, 294 Ky. 858, 172 S.W.2d 548 (1943).
Although KRS 64.410(2)(c) prohibits the payment of public funds except for actual performance of public services, KRS 64.530(6) contains no suggestion of any formal accounting or specific documenting of such expenses. See Roland v. Jefferson County Fiscal Court, Ky. App., 599 S.W.2d 469 (1980). We have no way of knowing whether the courts would require such a formal accounting.
Assuming that the fiscal court, by majority vote, established the expense account at $300 per month under KRS 64.530(6), then the motion to reduce that amount by $200 failed because of a tie vote.