Request By:
Mr. Homer Lee Jackson
Knox County Judge Executive
Box 107
Barbourville, Kentucky 40906
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your letter reads:
"The Fiscal Court of Knox County requests your written opinion on this question;
"What specific financial obligation does the fiscal court have to the Knox County Sheriff's Office?"
While the sheriff is a constitutional and elected officer, the sheriff's office is a county office.
The sheriff is a fee officer. He 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 authorized deputies, and authorized official expenses. Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958). However, the sheriff's financial relationship with the county or county treasury is not a one-way street. The relationship is a reciprocal one. If the sheriff, at the end of a calendar year, has insufficient fees or receipts to pay statutorily authorized expenses of his office, the fiscal court, has the responsibility of paying for such expenses out of the county treasury, provided there is available money in a properly budgeted item. Thus the necessary expenses of a sheriff's office may be paid out of the sheriff's fees, or out of the county treasury upon proper budgeting procedure, or from a combination of the sheriff's fees and the county treasury.
In those counties in which, by agreement between the sheriff and fiscal court, the county takes over all of the sheriff's receipts, all necessary statutory expenses of the sheriff's office must be paid out of the county treasury. Christian County, we understand, has that system. See KRS 67.080(2)(b) and 67.083(3)(p). The inevitable logic here centers around the fact that the sheriff's office is a county office. It is not an autonomous island off to itself; and the county cannot reap the financial benefit (excess fees) without assuming some of the burden of that office, should the occasion arise. We believe that the fiscal court must carefully evaluate the financial status of the sheriff's office in terms of patterns emerging from the audit reports on the sheriff's office in the recent years in order to properly integrate their situation with a county budgeted back-up, where it becomes necessary.