Request By:
Mr. Elmer Cunnagin, Jr.
Laurel County Attorney
Courthouse
London, Kentucky 40741
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; BY: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
A local funeral home corporation has presided over the burial of a pauper. The funeral home has billed the county for the burial expense. A member of fiscal court owns a share of stock in the funeral home corporation, which has 20 shareholders.
Since the fiscal court will pay the dead pauper's bill under KRS 67.083, you ask whether there is a conflict of interest on the part of the shareowner who is a member of fiscal court. The answer is technically, on the face of it, yes.
KRS 61.220(1) prohibits any member of fiscal court from having any interest in a claim, directly or indirectly, against the county.
Although KRS 61.220 suggests a technical conflict of interest in this situation, it is possible that, upon the testimony of an accountant that the fiscal court member's monetary interest in the burial transaction is nominal or of no meaningful value, such as to involve an interest remote or speculative, the courts might hold that the statute would not apply. See Commonwealth v. Withers, 266 Ky. 29, 98 S.W.2d 24 (1936) 25, 26.
You ask what the closest degree of kinship would be before a member of the fiscal court's family could own a share of stock in a company with which the county deals, without a conflict of interest.
The answer is that if the stock is owned, not by the member of fiscal court, but by a family relative not his wife, there would be no conflict of interest under KRS 61.220. See OAG 69-375, copy enclosed, on that point.
In any event, the subject fiscal court member should at the meeting state on the record that he is disqualified from voting on the matter under KRS 61.220, and then he should leave the meeting and return only after that question has been voted on. By this action the affected member can obviate the possibility of getting into being counted with a majority vote. See Lawrence County v. Lawrence Fiscal Court, 191 Ky. 45, 229 S.W. 139 (1921) 141.
It can be argued that the statute, KRS 61.220, was designed to prohibit a member of fiscal court from doing business with the county on any substantial or meaningful monetary scale. See Lemon v. Fiscal Court of Casey County, Ky., 291 S.W.2d 572 (1956) 573.