Request By:
Mr. Steve Lowery
Central Kentucky
News-Journal
500 Forest Avenue
Campbellsville, Kentucky 42718
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your question concerns the acquisition of gasoline by the city of Campbellsville without advertising for bids. The city attorney maintains that bidding is not necessary since the city never purchases more than $2,500 of gasoline per day. A news items indicates the city spent $32,418 on gasoline in 1977.
KRS 424.260 requires a city buying materials, supplies, etc., involving an expenditure of more than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), to first make newspaper advertisement for bids. This requirement for bids is mandatory, and nonobservance renders the contract void.
Board of Education of Floyd County v. Hall, Ky., 353 S.W.2d 194 (1962) 195. Cities or counties cannot make such purchases in dribbles and dabs and thus circumvent this statute.
The city should calculate what gasoline it will need for at least a one year period. If the costs will exceed $2,500, then obviously it will have to be let out on advertisement for bids. This business of figuring gasoline needs for one day is not legal when considering KRS 424.260. The practice you mention is wholly illegal and void. KRS 424.260 must be strictly followed if purchases are to be legal. The purpose of bidding is to "protect the taxpaying public against the wasting of public funds and to prevent abuses such as fraud, favoritism, improvidence and extravagance." 72 C.J.S., Supp., Public Contracts, § 8, p. 182.