Request By:
Mr. James Hite Hays
Shelby County Attorney
Courthouse
Shelbyville, Kentucky 40065
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You refer to KRS 134.500, which provides a 20% commission payable to county attorneys who perform their duties in connection with the collection of delinquent taxes.
You ask whether that commission money can be expended by you for travel, lodging, meals, registration fees and related expenses incurred while you were attending legal courses relating to your civil (county) and prosecutorial duties (state). The expenses involved your continuing legal education as it relates to your public functions, as mentioned above.
KRS 134.545 reads:
"Moneys paid to the county attorney under KRS 132.350, 134.340, 134.400, 134.500, 134.540 and 135.040 shall be used only for payment of county attorney office operating expenses. "
The key here is "county attorney office operating expenses. " By way of analogy, KRS 15.750(3) and (4) provides that the office expenses incurred by the county attorney in the performance of his duties as a criminal prosecutor shall be paid by the Commonwealth. Such expenses incurred by the county attorney in the performance of his duties as legal adviser to the county shall be paid by fiscal court or urban-county council.
While KRS 134.545 establishes no explicit guidelines, it is our opinion that such expenses for continuing legal education may be funded out of such commissions, provided that such courses substantially relate to your statutory functions involving either your civil legal work for the county or your prosecutorial work for the state, or both, and are reasonably calculated to improve the efficiency of your statutory functions. Under the proviso just outlined, it may be assumed that such continued legal education is indispensably necessary to the proper conduct of your statutory duties. Barkley v. Gatewood, 285 Ky. 179, 147 S.W.2d 373 (1941) 375. See Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958) 508, approving, as legitimate county attorney office expenses, expenditures for membership in the National Association of County Attorneys and attending county attorneys' schools and conventions. The court ruled that such expenses were "official" and not "personal". See also Reeves v. Talbott, 289 Ky. 581, 159 S.W.2d 51 (1942), relating to legitimacy of travel expenses incurred in attending a tax conference in order to promote the carrying out of the statutory duties of the revenue commissioner.
The Supreme Court of Kentucky has recognized generally the importance of continuing the legal education of attorneys, in order to keep the attorneys reasonably abreast of the changes in the law and the interpretations of the law as rendered by the judiciary. See SCR 3.670, et seq.
If you stay within the above guidelines, we believe the courts would not disapprove of such expenditures as an abuse of discretion.