Request By:
Honorable Henry M. Reed III
Attorney at Law
Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald
3300 First National Tower
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of November 12 concerning the Trimble County Special School Building Tax Election which was held on August 30, 1979. With respect to this election you relate the following facts and questions:
"At its meeting of August 10, the Board of Education adopted a Resolution requesting that the Board of Elections conduct a Special School Tax Election in the Trimble County School District in order to determine whether or not the voters were in favor of the levy of a Special School Building Tax of not less than five cents (5 ) nor more than ten cents (10 ) for a period not to exceed twenty-five years. As indicated on pages 1, 2 and 3 of the Board minutes and on pages 2, 3 and 5 of the minutes of the Board of Elections, the tax to be voted on August 30 was to be in addition to a similar tax approved at a Special Election held on June 14, 1952.
"The Notice of School Building Tax Election as published in the Trimble Banner-Democrat on August 16, 1979 indicated as follows in the second paragraph thereof:
'said special school building tax, if approved by the voters, will be in addition to the special school building tax approved by the voters on June 14, 1952 in the amount of not less than five cents (5 ) nor more than thirty-six cents (36 ) but currently being levied at the rate of 9.3 cents as a result of "rollback requirements".'
"The form of Ballot used in the election did not contain a reference to the existing 1952 levy and a question has arisen as to whether or not the voters were properly informed that they were voting a tax in addition to the 1952 tax by casting their ballots in favor of the 1979 levy. "
The special school tax election was presumedly held pursuant to the terms of KRS 160.477. Under this section it is required that pursuant to the request of the board of education to the county board of elections, the proposition as to whether a school building tax rate of not less than five cents (5 ) nor more than ten cents (10 ) to be levied on each one hundred dollars ($100) of property subject to local taxation, was placed on the November ballot. From this you will note that there is no requirement that the question include the information that there is an existing school tax levy voted favorably upon in 1952. As a matter of fact, there is no prescribed form in which the question is to be submitted to the voters. The general rule in such instance is that the ballot should simply contain a description of the proposal to be submitted in such language as to constitute a fair protrayal of the chief features of the proposed tax in words of plain meaning so that it can be understood by persons entitled to vote on the question. See Am. Jur. 2d, Elections, § 221. Likewise, the notice requirement for the election is couched in very general terms thereby ruling out the necessity of mentioning the present tax levy.
With the above in mind, we refer you to the case of Hulbert v. Board of Education of Louisville, Ky., 382 S.W.2d 389 (1964), which we believe answers your basic question. This case involved a declaratory judgment action concerning the validity of two tax propositions submitted to the voters at an election instituted by the boards of education of the city of Louisville and Jefferson County. One of the minor questions involved in this case was the failure of the questions to relate that the new school taxes would be in addition to certain others that were in existence at the time. The court rejected this contention by stating that:
"Appellants complain that the question proposed by the City Board, unlike that proposed by the County Board, did not recite that the new taxes would be in addition to certain others specified. No law requires the listing of existing taxes in the proposal for a new tax. The question recites that the ad valorem tax will be an 'additional' one. Even without this it would seem clear that a proposition upon which a vote is requested must necessarily be for something other than that which was then in existence. The voter could not be misled or deceived in this respect." (Emphasis added.)
Aside from the above, it is clear that the publicity given to the voting public by the notice of the election was, in any event, adequate to inform them of the existence of the current school tax levy voted on in 1952. See the case cited by you, namely, Pelfrey v. Board of Education of Jackson Independent School District, Ky., 273 S.W.2d 353 (1954).
Under the circumstances, even though the voters were sufficiently informed of the presence of the 1952 tax levy, it was unnecessary in light of the Hulbert case for them to be publicly informed at all, either by the notice of by reference in the ballot question.