Request By:
Hon. James Hite Hays
Shelby County Attorney
501 Main Street
Courthouse
Shelbyville, Kentucky 40065
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
A controversy has developed between the County Judge-Executive and the other members of the Shelby County Fiscal Court as relates to county roads and bridges.
For example, the budget appropriated several thousand dollars for bridge repair, without specifying which bridge it applied to. Without fiscal court approval, the County Judge-Executive ordered the road department to begin work on a particular bridge.
Your question is: What are the lines of authority in connection with county road and bridge construction, maintenance, repair, etc.?
This problem can be brought into perspective by noting that the legislative authority of the county relating to roads, inter alia, is vested in the fiscal court. See KRS 67.080(2)(b) [appropriate county funds for roads, etc.], 67.083(3)(t) [enact ordinances relating to county streets, roads, bridges, etc.], 178.010(1)(b) [definition of county roads], 178.080 [establishment of public roads, bridges] , 178.115 [power of fiscal court to establish roads], and 179.070. Implicit in this legislative authority is the authority of the fiscal court as a body to determine by appropriate ordinances, resolutions, or orders the precise road and bridge programming for the county. Thus, the responsibility for determining precisely just what specifically designated road segments and bridges will be constructed, reconstructed, maintained, or repaired, rests with the fiscal court as a body, not the County Judge-Executive. The fiscal court is responsible for approving all county expenditures and claims against the county treasury. The fiscal court is empowered to regulate and control the fiscal affairs of the county. KRS 67.080(1)(c). See Thompson v. Bracken County, Ky., 294 S.W.2d 943 (1956) 947, emphasizing that county road programming must be determined by the fiscal court acting as a body, not by magistrates separately working out a program in each of their districts.
The County Judge-Executive, as the county's chief executive officer, has the responsibility of executing the road and bridge projects or programs specifically authorized and formulated by the fiscal court. See KRS 67.710 and 67.722.
You ask about road and bridge construction, maintenance or repair on an emergency basis.
The fiscal court may approve of an administrative code provision whereby the County Judge-Executive could, under a properly defined emergency situation, take steps to effect repair of a road or bridge, subject, however, to a ratification of such action by the fiscal court as a body at the first meeting opportunity. Estill County v. Wallace, 219 Ky. 174, 292 S.W. 816 (1927).