Request By:
Mr. Dale M. Morris
Larue County Attorney
Hodgenville, Kentucky
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You ask for our opinion as to whether the county judge/executive's secretary can serve at the same time as county treasurer.
The pertinent facts were stated by you as follows:
"The County Judge Executive has a secretary employed for him by the Larue Fiscal Court. As you well know, in that capacity she is responsible for the handling of County Funds, preparing checks, ledgers and other book-keeping functions pertinent thereto. The Fiscal Court has requested that she be paid some additional renumeration for which she would also act as County Treasurer. "
The county treasurer is purely a ministerial officer who holds money deposited in the county treasury subject to orders of the fiscal court. KRS 68.020; and
Cain v. Burroughs Adding Mach, Co., 180 Ky. 567, 203 S.W. 315 (1918).
Assuming that the secretary has the qualifications mentioned in KRS 68.010, we know of no statute expressly prohibiting the secretary from being at the same time the county treasurer. Of course we assume she would be able to perform both functions in the manner required by law.
The present statutes require the county judge/executive and the county treasurer to maintain separate and independent records reflecting county bank balances and county appropriations. Thus under normal circumstances, and where the county treasurer is not also employed by the county judge/exeuctive, the records of the county treasurer and the county judge/executive would furnish a kind of double check finance system. Now if the secretary served also as county treasurer, we could assume that the records of the county judge/executive and the county treasurer would be identical, since the same person would be immediately preparing such records. Whether this lack of independence in maintaining two bookkeeping systems would be a disqualification would be up to the courts.
You ask about the correct time for appointing a county treasurer.
KRS 68.010(1) requires that the fiscal court, at its regular April term every four (4) years, beginning with 1913, appoint a county treasurer for a term of four (4) years. Where the appointment is not made at the April term, the fiscal court must take such action within two (2) weeks after the adjournment of the April term. Under the original scheduling of terms the county treasurer should have been appointed at the April term of 1977 for the four (4) year term extending to the April term of 1981.
Under subsection (4) of KRS 68.010, in case of a vacancy for any reason in the office of the county treasurer, the county judge/executive is required to call a special term of fiscal court to fill the vacancy.
It must be kept in mind that a county treasurer can only serve for a period not exceeding the four year term, since § 107 of the Kentucky Constitution expressly permits the legislature to provide for the election or appointment of county or district ministerial or executive officers for a "term not exceeding four years." (Emphasis added). Thus a county treasurer cannot constitutionally serve as county treasurer after the expiration of the four year term, even if the appointment statute included the phrase "and until his successor is appointed and qualified" [KRS 68.010 includes no such phrase]. See