Request By:
Honorable Roger Noe
State Representative Elect
88th Legislative District
201 Sycamore Street
Harlan, Kentucky 40831
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of November 22 in which you relate that you were recently elected State Representative from the 88th Legislative District. You are an assistant professor at Southeast Community College in Cumberland, Kentucky, which is a part of the University of Kentucky Community College System; however, you are presently on leave of absence from your teaching position but would like to resume teaching after the close of the 1978 Regular Session.
Under the circumstances, you raise the question as to whether or not you could resume your teaching position at the state community college and continue to serve as state representative.
Our response to your question would be in the negative in view of the following provisions of KRS 6.800:
"(1) No legislator shall accept any appointment as an officer or employe of the commonwealth or any state agency except as provided in section 165 of the constitution unless he shall have first resigned his membership in the general assembly, and it shall be unlawful for the state treasurer to pay any salary by reason of such appointment until the resignation has been received by the presiding officer of the house of which he is a member." (Emphasis added.)
Your position on the faculty at the Southeast Community College, a part of the University of Kentucky Community College System, would constitute a form of state employment as we have previously pointed out in OAG 73-8, a copy of which we are enclosing. The reference in the opinion to KRS 61.096 (5) has been superseded by KRS 6.800 quoted above which is incorporated in the Legislative Ethics Act enacted in 1976 as indicated in OAG 77-553 and OAG 76-471, copies enclosed. Also, as pointed out in OAG 76-471, the University of Kentucky is a state agency and of course the community colleges are state institutions with the result that employees thereof must be considered state employees.
Under the circumstances and as previously mentioned, KRS 6.800 would prohibit you as a member of the legislature from resuming your position at Southeast Community College.