Request By:
Mr. Troy Hampton
Knox County Clerk
Barbourville, Kentucky 40906
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
As County Clerk of Knox County, your letter and questions read as follows:
I am the County Clerk in Knox County, Kentucky. In the 1982-1983 Budget the Knox County Fiscal Court appropriated $15,000.00 for the clerks operating budget to buy books, supplies & etc. necessary to operate the clerk's office. At the end of each year all excess fees are turned over to the fiscal court.
In September of this year the county ran short of funds and transferred $5,000.00 from the clerk's account leaving a balance of $8,200.00 still in that account. The county judge executive refuses to sign any purchase orders. Everyone is required to have a purchase order signed by the county judge executive and the county treasurer. I would like to know the legal duties of each, the county judge executive, the county tresaurer and the county ckerk in this situation. I would also like to know what I must do to obtain the necessary supplies to operate my office.
The county clerks are still under the operation of the excess fee principle enunciated in Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 817 S.W.2d 499 (1958). The principle is that a county officer who is compensated wholly or in part from fees (this covers county clerks) is required to pay over to the county each year, the excess of receipts over and above the amounts allowable for his personal compensation, the compensation of his legally authorized deputies and assistants, and authorized official expenses.
The county clerk is a county officer and has this duty of turning over excess fees to the county treasurer. However, the county's benefit is not divorced from the county's burden. The fiscal court, to the extent that the county clerk's office runs short in the procurement and payment of necessary official expenses (certain necessary supplies, etc.), when considering the clerk's fees and any county appropriation, has the responsibility of procuring and paying for such needed office supplies under proper budget procedure. There has to be in existence a county budget appropriation which contains the needed money and which is not budgeted for some special and irrevocable purpose. See KRS 68.100, 68.110, and § 180, Kentucky Constitution.
While it is true that all warrants for payments of funds from the county treasury must be co-signed by the county treasurer and county judge executive under KRS 68.020(1), the authorization for using county funds to pay for necessary official supplies for the county clerk's office can only come by a majority vote of the fiscal court at a properly called meeting. See KRS 67.080(1) and (2).
We assume the transfer of $5,000 out of your appropriation was properly accomplished pursuant to KRS 68.290.