Request By:
Mr. James M. Groves
Todd Circuit Court Clerk
Courthouse
Elkton, Kentucky 42220
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your annual salary for 1977 and 1978 was $17,577.00. You ask whether you are entitled to a 10% increase over the $17,577.00 figure in 1978, and then, as of January 1, 1979, a 5% increase?
In 1977 your salary was the maximum permissible under the rubber dollar statute. KRS 64.527. You were being paid in 1978 at the rate of $17,000 per year. However, the A.O.C. agreed with our opinion OAG 78-594, which opinion concluded that a decrease in salary is a prohibited change in compensation under § 235 of our Constitution. As a result, your $17,577 level was restored.
The circuit clerks, effective January 2, 1978, were removed from the operative provisions of KRS 64.527 [rubber dollar statute for various county constitutional officers].
Apparently the last official population figure for Todd County was 10,761. Under the table in KRS 64.055 the maximum, payable out of the state treasury, for 1978 in your situation was $17,000, based upon the population factor table just mentioned. However, paragraph 1 of KRS 64.055 provides for a base to compare with the maximum salary table set out at the beginning of the statute, and the base serves to determine the applicability of a percentage increase provided in paragraphs 2 and 3 of the statute, whichever is applicable. Now your base under paragraph 1 happens to be $17,577 [the maximum authorized for 1977 under KRS 64.527]. Thus the percentage increase under paragraph 3 applies, which is a 10% increase over the $17,577, amounting to a final figure of $19,334.70. Your total salary for 1978 should be $19,334.70. The maximum permissible compensation under the court adopted rubber dollar formula for 1978 for circuit clerks is $31,272.00. Your constitutional annual compensation for 1978 should be therefore $19,334.70. KRS 30A.010(2) makes circuit clerks state officers whose duties are coextensive with the Commonwealth. This invokes the $12,000 monetary level under § 246 of the Constitution. See
Commonwealth Ex Rel. Hancock v. Davis, Ky., 521 S.W.2d 823 (1975). Thus, in using the $12,000 level in the C.P.I. formula, the maximum permissible compensation for 1978 under § 246, Constitution, is $31,272.00. However, the permissible compensation as further restricted under KRS 64.055 is $19,334.70, as above calculated, for 1978.
Beginning with 1979 and thereafter, under current legislation, you can receive an adjustment upward each year, according to the determination of the Supreme Court of Kentucky under KRS 64.057, subject finally to the permissible maximum under the consumer price index formula as laid out in
Matthews v. Allen, Ky., 360 S.W.2d 135 (1962); and
Commonwealth v. Hesch, Ky., 395 S.W.2d 362 (1965).
It must be carefully kept in mind that to get constitutional officer's compensation in proper perspective, one must consider two levels of compensation restriction: (1) The overall constitutional maximum based upon the adjustment of the dollar in terms of change in the consumer price index formula enunciated by the appellate court as applied to the monetary base levels set out in § 246 of the Constitution; (2) the statutory maximum compensation, which, of course, must not exceed the constitutional maximum. This simply means that the legislature, in enacting legislation implementing the rubber dollar concept [constitutional maximum] , must scrupulously observe the workings of the rubber dollar formula as set out in Matthews v. Allen and Commonwealth v. Hesch, above. Pragmatically this ultimately means that an implementing statute conforming to § 246 of the Constitution, as adjusted under the price index formula system, will determine the actual compensation to be paid.