Request By:
Mr. Bobby McKee
Operations Manager
Kentucky Retirement Systems
226 West Second Street
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Patrick B. Kimberlin, III, Assistant Attorney General
This is in response to your recent letter wherein you ask for an interpretation of KRS 61.546(1) which reads as follows:
"Any member of the Kentucky employes retirement system or state police retirement system who is employed by the Commonwealth shall, on retirement, receive credit for unused sick leave accrued in the state service in accordance with this section."
Specifically, you ask to what extent are the various state public retirement systems responsible for crediting, upon retirement, the sick leave accrued by an individual with an account in more than one of those retirement systems.
We have previously indicated that the state retirement systems, due to statutes permitting reciprocal agreements among those systems, are liable for only their proportional share of the benefits to an individual who has an account in more than one of the systems. OAG 74-904; KRS 61.680. In a similar vein, we interpret KRS 61.546(1) to mean that each of the state public retirement systems is responsible for crediting only that amount of sick leave which the individual has accrued while participating as a member in that particular retirement system; and, only then, if that particular retirement system permits accumulated sick leave to be credited upon retirement.