Request By:
Mr. Robert Moore
Trimble County Clerk
Bedford, Kentucky 40006
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You would like to pay the health insurance premiums on yourself and your deputies without fiscal court approval.
We said in OAG 84-203 that "county employees" includes the deputies, assistants and various statutory support personnel of local or county constitutional officers. Shipp v. Rodes, 196 Ky. 523, 245 S.W. 157 (1922).
You have written that the Trimble County Fiscal Court does not pay for the health insurance premiums on any county employees. We know of no statutory basis for a fiscal court's legislating, on its own initiative, on such medical insurance, fringe benefit, program for deputies of county constitutional officers.
You would be required, if you favor such fringe benefit, to request in writing the fiscal court's authorization to extend that benefit to all of your deputies alike. KRS 67.080 and 67.083. The deputies' participation in that program is based upon the constitutional officer's requesting the fiscal court to so act.
The fiscal court is not mandated to establish such a fringe benefit for its own personnel. If it does establish such a benefit for its own employees, it would have to uniformly cover all fiscal court or direct county employees.
The fiscal court may honor your request, provided that the program could be adequately funded out of the fees of your office, or out of the county treasury (where money is available under a properly budgeted fund), or out of both sources.
Concerning your question as to whether you could apply the health insurance, fringe benefit, to yourself as county clerk, we are unfortunately unaware of any statute permitting you to have the benefit as a county officer. We note that KRS 79.080(2) expressly permits counties to extend such medical insurance coverage to its employees (with the employees paying a percentage of the premium or the county paying all of the premium) . That statute does not include county officers. Thus, as it presently stands, you would have to pay, out of your own personal funds, the total premium for such insurance for yourself.
We feel that if the legislature in the future includes county officers in KRS 79.080(2), there would be no constitutional problem in terms of a public purpose. See §§ 3 and 171, Kentucky Constitution; and Talbott v. Thomas, 286 Ky. 786, 151 S.W.2d 1 (1941).