Request By:
Honorable Larry Zielke
Assistant Director of Law
Department of Law
City of Louisville
City Hall
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of April 19 in which you request an opinion concerning the following:
"The question concerns when the Board of Aldermen must proceed to vote to either sustain or override a veto by the Mayor of a first class city. The Board of Aldermen, according to its bylaws, meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. The particular fact situation which developed is as follows:
"The Board of Aldermen met on the fourth Tuesday of the month and passed an ordinance. The Mayor vetoed the ordinance prior to the next regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen. The Board of Aldermen met during the first Tuesday of the next month where the veto message was given to the Board of Aldermen. The Board did not act on the veto; they then met at a special meeting during the third week of the month and did not consider the veto ordinance. The Board of Aldermen is scheduled to meet during the fourth Truesday of the month and is expected to consider the vetoed ordinance.
"The question concerns the language contained at KRS 83.500(3) wherein it states: "If he [the Mayor] disapporoves the oridnance or resolution, or any item of an appropriation measure, he shall return it, with the objections, to the Board of Aldermen, which shall enter his objections in full upon its journal and proceed at its next or at its second regular meeting thereafter to consider it."
Our interpretation of the language used in the above statute would be to the effect that the board of aldermen could not consider the mayor's veto at the meeting of the board that it is received and recorded, but on the other hand, must consider said veto at either the next regular meeting thereafter or at the second regular meeting thereafter. The key word in the statute appears to be the word "thereafter" as used in connection with the next regular meeting following the meeting at which the veto is received and recorded.
This would mean that under the factual situation presented, the anticipated fourth Tuesday regular meeting of the board of aldermen would appear to be its first regular meeting following the meeting at which the veto was received and recorded, which is within the time frame provided for in KRS 83.500 for consideration of the veto.