Request By:
Mr. Billy Mitchell, Chairman
Board of Trustees
Taylor County Hospital
Campbellsville, KY 42718
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By William S. Riley, Assistant Attorney General
In your recent letter to the Attorney General the question is whether the Taylor County Hospital Board in establishing a tax for the new year will be permitted to maintain the same ten cents per one hundred dollars assessed evaluation as provided in the statute in light of the legislation passed by the 1979 Extraordinary Session of the Legislature.
KRS 132.023(1)(a) provides that notwithstanding any statutory provisions to the contrary no taxing district other than the state, counties, school districts, cities and urban-county governments shall levy a tax rate for 1979-80 which will produce more revenue, exclusive of revenue from net assessment growth, than would be produced by application of the maximum tax rate that could have been levied in 1978-79 to the 1978-79 assessment. Under subsection (2) no taxing district other than the state, counties, school districts, cities and urban-county governments shall levy a tax rate within the limits imposed in subsection (1) of this section which exceeds the compensating tax rate defined in KRS 132.010 until the taxing district has complied with the provisions of subsection (3) of this section. Subsection (3) provides for notice of hearing.
KRS 132.010(6) defines "compensating tax rate" to mean that rate which rounded to the next higher one-tenth of one cent per one hundred dollars of assessed value and applied to the current year's assessment of the property subject to taxation by a taxing district, excluding new property and personal property, produces an amount of revenue approximately equal to that produced in the preceding year from real property. In no event shall the compensating tax rate be a rate which when applied to the total current year assessment of all classes of taxable property produces an amount of revenue less than was produced in the preceding year from all classes of taxable property.
The answer to your question is yes, the provisions of the statute outlined above applies to the tax rate to be set by the hospital board for the new year.