Request By:
Mr. Robert Moore, Clerk
Trimble County
Trimble County Courthouse
Bedford, Kentucky 40006
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By William S. Riley, Assistant Attorney General
In your recent letter to the Attorney General it is stated that in 1978 a tax rate of 1.2 cents per hundred dollars assessed valuation of property was set and collected for the Little Watershed District in Trimble County. The amount collected according to the sheriff's settlement was $509.89.
For the year 1979 the Little Watershed District is asking for $1300.00 or a rate of 2.4 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation of property which is more than the 4% increase of House Bill 44 passed by the 1978 Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly.
The question is if the Watershed District Board asks the Trimble County Fiscal Court to levy a tax rate of 2.4 cents per hundred dollars of assessment to produce $1300.00 what is the Fiscal Court's duty.
Under KRS 262.765 the board of directors of a watershed conservancy district furnishes to the property valuation administrator of a county by January 1 of each year a list of landowners in the county involved subject to assessment, and the property valuation administrator of the county or counties involved shall indicate, for the use of the clerk, such information on the tax rolls. When the property tax rolls are delivered to the county clerk by the property valuation administrator, as required by law, the county clerk computes the tax due the district from each landowner in accordance with the rate set by the board of directors of the district with the computation made on the regular bills in such manner as may be directed by Department of Revenue regulation.
The fiscal court has no function to perform in connection with the setting of the watershed district rate. The county clerk has a purely ministerial function of computing the rate and placing it on the tax bills.
Neither the Trimble County Clerk nor the Trimble County Fiscal Court has any duty to question a rate set by the Little Kentucky Watershed District. It is the responsibility of the members of the board of directors of a watershed conservancy district to set the rate in accordance with applicable statutes.