Request By:
Mr. Bremer Ehrler
Jefferson County Clerk
Courthouse
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The fiscal court is a court of record. Every official action 1 of fiscal court must be made a part of the permanent records of the county. KRS 67.100. The minutes of each meeting are to be typed and submitted for approval at the next succeeding meeting. A copy of all such records are required by KRS 67.100(5) to be kept in the office of the county clerk. The Jefferson County Clerk, under KRS 67.120(2), is not clerk of the fiscal court.
The minutes, just referred to, are routinely typed and filed in very large and bulky index books in Jefferson County and are always available for inspection. The original pages of minutes are presently maintained by the fiscal court clerk in a room on the same floor of your office, but it is not in integral part of your office.
You ask whether or not it is necessary for you to maintain a copy of such minutes in your office.
Under KRS 67.120(2), the clerk of fiscal court in Jefferson County is required to keep a full and correct record of all the proceedings of fiscal court, together with a complete index.
If your office maintains a copy of such minutes, then there would be an obvious duplication, with its attendant impact upon the taxpayers. The courts have wisely espoused the rule that the law will not force any one to do a vain and useless thing.
Kentucky Title Co. v. Hail, 219 Ky. 256, 292 S.W. 817 (1927) 821. Here it is clear that the legislature was merely providing in KRS 67.100 and 67.120 that at least one copy of all the official records of fiscal court be available for the public's inspection and use. We do not construe the statute to guarantee the public custody of two copies of such records, which would be the case if you are required to keep a duplicate copy in your office. As we cited, the law does not require the doing of a vain thing.
The office of the fiscal court clerk [which is a short distance and just down the hall from your office] has a copy (original) of the minutes. They are always available to the public. One copy for the public is enough. Even if it were to be said, arguendo, that KRS 67.100(5) requires you to keep a copy of the fiscal court minutes [and we do not believe it does], it can also be said that the specific statute, KRS 67.120, which requires the fiscal court clerk to maintain a copy of such records, governs over KRS 67.100(5). See
City of Bowling Green v. Board of Education, Ky., 443 S.W.2d 243 (1969), holding that as between legislation of a broad and general nature on the one hand, and legislation dealing minutely with a specific matter on the other hand, the specific shall prevail over the general.
In reading KRS 67.100 and 67.120 together, and under the circumstances peculiar to Jefferson County under these statutes, it is our opinion that the fiscal court clerk's copy of the minutes will constitute substantial compliance with KRS 67.100 and 67.120. Thus it is our view that you, as county clerk, are not required to maintain a copy of the fiscal court minutes in your office.
We think this view is just good common sense. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge expressed it,
"Good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul."
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 This would include ordinances, resolutions, orders and motions. KRS 67.076.