Request By:
Mr. Dwight Preston
Hardin County Attorney
30 Public Square
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your father and his corporation, in which you now have no financial interest, sold some rock to Hardin County. The purchase and sale were effected prior to the advent of the Kentucky Model Procurement Code (effective January 1, 1980) and about two years before you became county attorney. Prior to your taking office, you divested yourself of any interest you had in subject corporation. We assume that the purchase and sale took place sometime in 1976. On March 10, 1980, a claim by the subject corporation for the rock furnished was approved by fiscal court. But you have requested the county judge/executive to withhold payment of the claim until you receive an opinion from this office on your question.
That question: "Is the purchase and sale of the rock by my father and his corporation an automatic violation of KRS 45A.455, or does the statute require some direct or indirect participation in the contract on my part?"
KRS 45A.455 provides in effect that it is a breach of ethical standards for a public employe to participate directly or indirectly in any claim, against the governmental unit employer, in which he or any member of his immediate family has a financial interest therein. "Immediate family" is defined by KRS 45A.445(6) as a spouse, children, parents, etc.
"Financial interest" is defined as ownership of any interest in any relationship from which a person has, within the past three years, received or is presently or in the future entitled to receive more than $1,000 per year or ownership of more than 10% interest in any business. KRS 45A.445(4).
As concerns this rock sale to the county in 1976, since you apparently have no direct or indirect financial interest in that transaction presently or in the future, and had no interest in the claim within the past three years [3 years prior to January 1, 1980, the effective date of the legislation], the conflict of interest statute, KRS 45A.455, has no application to you. Under the literal wording of the statute the application thereof requires the coexistence of the governmental employee's interest and the interest of a member of his immediate family. See H.O. Hurley Co. v. Martin, 267 Ky. 182, 101 S.W.2d 657 (1937), stressing that the courts are bound by the plain meaning of language used in the statute.