Request By:
Mr. Charles M. Chaney
Carlisle County Attorney
Courthouse
Bardwell, Kentucky 42023
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
On June 6, 1977, the Fiscal Court of Carlisle County voted to pay each magistrate of the county the sum of $100 per month expense allowance, pursuant to KRS 64.258, retroactive to January 1, 1977. They are considering making it retroactive to July 1, 1976. You ask about the legality of the voted measure and the proposed action.
Since salaries and expense allowances are practically and statutorily an annual or yearly matter, we believe that the vote to make the expense allowances retroactive to January 1, 1977, was legal. In a strict sense the fixing of such allowance back to January 1, 1977, is not a matter of retroactivity since they were dealing with the same current year. See KRS 64.530(3). Cf. KRS 446.080(3).
As concerns the proposal to make it retroactive to July 1, 1976, we find no basis for this; and we think it would be illegal. Getting back into a year other than 1977 would really constitute retroactivity. See KRS 446.080(3) and