Request By:
Mr. Stanley M. Greenwell
Shelby County Sheriff
501 Main Street
Shelbyville, Kentucky 40065
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
One of your deputies provides security services for the circuit court [KRS 23A.090] and another deputy provides security services for the district court [KRS 24A.140]. You have been placing the fees earned for those deputy services in your regular sheriff's account. Where such fees are excess, they are turned into the county treasury.
You ask whether or not that is correct procedure. You say in some counties the deputies divide such fees among themselves.
The fees earned by deputies are really fees of the sheriff's office, and must go into the generally official receipts of the sheriff. See
Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958). Of course, under Funk, above, you may be given proper credit against your excess fees, where you take such fees earned by your deputies and apply them on their salaries. But such fees earned by your deputies must first be turned into your regular sheriff's account.
Each year, i.e., within a reasonable time after each calendar year of your term, you are required to pay over to the county the excess, if any, of receipts over and above the amounts allowable for your personal compensation as sheriff, the compensation of your lawful deputies, and authorized official expenses. See Funk v. Milliken, above, p. 506. The payment of earned fees of deputies directly [out of your account] to the deputies, to be applied on their authorized salaries, is merely a short cut which is recognized by law. Funk v. Milliken, above. Otherwise, all of the deputies' salaries would have to be paid out of the county treasury.