Request By:
Honorable Brent Yonts
Attorney at Law
111 South Main Street
Greenville, Kentucky 42345
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of September 24 in which you raise the question as to whether it would be legal for a person regularly employed by the Federal Government as a coal mine inspector to be elected and serve at the same time as a member of the school board.
If the position with the Federal Government is merely a form of employment, there is nothing under the Constitution or statutes of this state that would prohibit the dual form of employment. Section 237 of the Constitution prohibits a person holding or exercising an office of trust or profit under the United States from holding at the same time an office of trust or profit under the Kentucky Constitution. Thus, this constitutional section would not be applicable to merely a Federal employee who holds membership on a school board, which is a state office as held in numerous cases, Hopkins v. Ramsey, 198 Ky. 465, 247 S.W. 371 (1923).
We might caution you however that it would be well to check with the United States District Attorney's Office to find out exactly what the position of coal mine inspector entails as it is possible under Federal law that it might be considered a Federal office, in which case an incompatibility would exist as we have mentioned above.