Request By:
Ms. Floe Bowles
The News-Enterprise
P.O. Box 430
408 West Dixie
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You write us that the Hardin Circuit Court Clerk, in causing the publication of financial statements as required by KRS 424.220, is using a newspaper that does not qualify under KRS 424.120.
The latter statute requires that the qualifying newspaper, carrying ads or material required to be published under KRS Chapter 424, must have the largest bona fide circulation in the publication area. You say audits indicate that your newspaper has the largest bona fide circulation in Hardin County by a ratio of three to one. The clerk is using a weekly newspaper that has about one-third of the circulation of your newspaper.
The answer to your question is that the clerk must use the newspaper having the largest bona fide circulation in the county. It is mandatory. Affidavits from each newspaper as to circulation would be sufficient on this point, if there is any question as to circulation. KRS 424.220 requires publication in the newspaper qualified under KRS 424.120.
You ask: What procedure is necessary to get the clerk to conform to KRS 424.120?
Any person who violates KRS 424.220 shall be fined not less than $50 nor more than $500 for each offense. In addition, any officer who fails to comply with KRS 424.220 shall, for each failure, be subject to a forfeiture of not less than $50 nor more than $500, in the discretion of the court, which forfeiture may be recovered only once, in a civil action brought by any citizen of the county for which the officer serves. See
Williams v. Commonwealth, Ky., 392 S.W.2d 454 (1965).
A mandamus action in circuit court is also an "appropriate remedy to compel a recalcitrant officer to perform a merely ministerial duty which the law requires at his hands."