Request By:
Honorable Babe C. Noplis
Perry County Judge
P.O. Box 450
Hazard, Kentucky 41701
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You refer to OAG 76-548, written to you. One problem remains.
In that opinion we concluded that the fiscal court order of June 27, 1972, providing that each justice of the peace shall receive a salary not to exceed $3600 per year, was not legal since for Perry County [around 25,000 in population] the authorized maximum is $2400 per year. KRS 64.255(2). However, subsection (2) of that statute further provides that:
"In counties having a population in excess of 20,000 and not exceeding 60,000, where the justices serve districts averaging 8,000 or more persons per district, each justice of the peace may be compensated by a salary not to exceed $3600 per annum." 1
The fiscal court order in question recited that each of the three justice's districts contained over 8,000 persons. Thus that $3600 maximum is permissible under KRS 64.255(2). Of course we have to assume here that the justices, under that order, performed judicial duties in the actual trial of criminal cases on a regular basis. See
Wilson v. Garner, Ky., 516 S.W.2d 333 (1974). Judge Cullen in that case pointed out that the legislature left it to each fiscal court to carry out the provisions of KRS 64.255 [setting salaries for justices of the peace for trying criminal cases], "realizing that any abuse of such discretion would be subject to attack in the courts." (Emphasis added).
Under the above assumptions, we believe that the salary limit authorized in the fiscal court order of June 27, 1972, was legal. Although the order says "not to exceed $3600," it must be interpreted as really meaning a salary of $3600. OAG 76-548 is modified accord rgly.
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 This part of the subsection was created in the 1972 session (Ch. 311), which became effective June 16, 1972.