Request By:
Honorable Bremer Ehrler
Secretary of State
State Capitol
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederic J. Cowan, Attorney General, Commonwealth of Kentucky
This is in response to your letter of April 26, 1988, in which you request the Attorney General to furnish you the wording of the two proposed constitutional amendments to be voted on by the electorate at the November 8 General Election.
Pursuant to Chapter 116 (House Bill 1) and Chapter 117 (Senate Bill 145) of the 1988 Acts of the General Assembly and Section 256 of the Kentucky Constitution, two proposed constitutional amendments are to be submitted to the electorate at the General Election to be held on November 8, 1988.
You as Secretary of State are required by KRS 118.415 (1) to publish the text of the proposed amendments in their entirety together with notice of the fact that they will be submitted to the voters for their acceptance or rejection, 100 days preceding the November election which would be not later than August 1. The manner of publication is detailed in the referred to statute and the text of the amendments will be found in Chapters 116 and 117 of the 1988 Acts mentioned above.
In accordance with the mandate of KRS 118.415(2), the Attorney General is required to state the substance of these amendments to be submitted to the electorate in the form of questions and must certify the ballot questions to the State Board of Elections for their inclusion on the voting machines throughout the state at the November 8 election.
The wording of the constitutional amendments that are to be certified by the State Board of Elections to the various county clerks throughout the state not less than 70 days before the November election (not later than August 30) for placement on the voting machines is as follows:
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT #1
Shall Section 226 of the Constitution be amended to provide that General Assembly may establish a Kentucky state lottery; may establish a state lottery to be conducted in cooperation with other states; and that any lottery so established shall be operated by or on behalf of the Commonwealth of Kentucky?
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT #2
Shall Section 19 of the Constitution be amended to provide that in any instrument heretofore or hereafter executed purporting to sever the surface and mineral estates or to grant a mineral estate or a right to extract minerals, which fails to state in specific terms the method of coal extraction to be employed, or where said instrument contains language subordinating the surface estate to the mineral estate, it shall be held, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, that the intention of the parties to the instrument was that the coal be extracted only by the methods of commercial coal extraction commonly known to be in use in the area affected at the time the instrument was executed, and that the mineral estate be dominant to the surface estate for the purposes of coal extraction by only the methods of commercial coal extraction commonly known to be in use in the area affected at the time the instrument was executed?
CERTIFICATE
To the Honorable Bremer Ehrler Secretary of State and Chairman State Board of Elections State Capitol Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Pursuant to the provisions of KRS 118.415(2), I hereby certify that the above questions contain the substance of the proposed amendments to the Constitution enacted by the 1988 General Assembly as detailed in Chapters 116 and 117 of the Acts that are required to be submitted to the electorate for their ratification or rejection at the General Election to be held on November 8, 1988.
This the 19th day of May, 1988.