Request By:
Mr. George S. Clark
Executive Director
Boone Regional Emergency Medical Services Systems, Inc.
160 East Reynolds Road
Lexington, Kentucky 40503
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your agency is in charge of emergency medical services for a forty-three county area, known as Boone Emergency Medical Services System, Inc.
Your question is whether or not revenue sharing and coal severance tax funds of counties may be used to subsidize both private and nonprofit agencies providing emergency ambulance services to counties under contract agreements pursuant to KRS 65.710 et seq. See KRS 65.730.
Concerning revenue sharing money allocated to a county, the fiscal court in entering in to such ambulance contracts with private or nonprofit persons or corporations can use and budget such money for such purposes. See 31 U.S.C.A. § 1241, providing that revenue sharing money allocated to a unit of local government may be budgeted and spent for any public purpose permitted by the statutes governing that government's expenditures generally. KRS 67.080, 67.083 (Home Rule) and 65.730 permit counties to expend its revenues, including revenue sharing money, in subsidizing emergency ambulance services carried on in behalf of the county.
The Coal Producing County Development Fund and the Coal Severance Economic Aid Fund are created in KRS 42.300 and 42.330 and are funded with the state coal severance tax. However, the use of such money allocated to a county is restricted to public or capital improvements in coal producing counties. In our opinion this means that such county money cannot be spent for county emergency ambulance services projects, since they do not involve public or capital improvements.