Request By:
Honorable Karl S. Forester
Attorney at Law
Forester Building
First 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 January 28 in which you state that your office represents the Greater Cumberland Corporation, a non-profit corporation created to receive funds from the Appalachian Regional Commission to be used in behalf of displaced residents of Sanctified Hill of Cumberland, Kentucky. You relate that the corporation has advertised on three occasions for bids for on-site development work, but in each instance the bids received have been substantially higher than the funds available to the corporation for the work in question. You state that it now appears that the corporation must negotiate privately with prospective contractors in order to have the first phase of the project constructed within the budget. Under the circumstances, you raise the question as to whether or not the bidding requirements under KRS 424.260 would be applicable to the Greater Cumberland Corporation.
Our response to your question would be in the negative. KRS 424.260 requiring contracts for materials, supplies or equipment, or for contractual services other than professional, to be on a bid basis, applies only to a city, county, district or board or commission of a city or county.
The Greater Cumberland Corporation is a non-profit corporation organized for the sole purpose of financing and constructing public projects as approved in a number of cases, such as