Request By:
Dr. Billy H. Stout, Superintendent
Trimble County Board of Education
Bedford, Kentucky 40006
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As the superintendent of the Trimble County Schools, you have asked the Office of the Attorney General to advise you on the following two questions:
1. Are we required by law or statute to furnish a list of teachers' salaries to the newspaper, if requested by the newspaper, to run free as a public service?
2. If a person owns land in two counties, pays taxes in both counties, but votes in a specific county, is the voting county considered the county of legal residence?
In response to your first question, we invite your attention to KRS 424.220, a copy of which is attached, relative to the publishing requirements for financial statements. This statute, as amended in 1976, was extensively discussed in OAG 76-393 and 76-415, a copy of each being attached hereto. While this statute requires, as concerns teachers' salaries, that the amount need only be shown as a lump sum figure, the statute further requires that each local board of education must furnish by mail a factual list of individual salaries of its employes to a newspaper qualified under law and that the newspaper may then, at its expense, publish as a news item the individual salaries of the school employes.
As concerns your second question, we refer you to OAG 76-116, copy attached. It is the county in which an individual physically resides that is critical for school purposes, not where one owns property, pays taxes or votes.