Request By:
Honorable Benny Ray Bailey
State Senator
Route #1, Box 102A
Hindman, Kentucky 41822
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
During the latest budget cuts, one of the programs closed was the juvenile detention center in Prestonsburg.
Your question was stated in your letter to us as follows:
"Checking the Human Resource Laws of Kentucky, I came across the enclosed law that relates to juvenile detention centers. As I read the law, it states that once the State has agreed to operate a center for the County, it cannot be closed without the mutual agreement of the fiscal court. Since I am not an attorney, I would like to have the opinion of your office concerning whether the State can close the juvenile detention center in Prestonsburg without the agreement of the Floyd County Fiscal Court."
KRS 208.130 provides in part that the fiscal court of each county shall provide suitable detention facilities for the care and custody of juveniles pending disposition of their cases by the juvenile session of district court.
On October 15, 1978, the Fiscal Court of Floyd County, pursuant to KRS 208.130(7), (8), and (9), leased the second floor of the Courthouse Annex in Prestonsburg to the Department for Human Resources as a juvenile detention facility. On October 10, 1978, the Floyd Fiscal Court had entered a resolution requesting the DHR to take control of, operate and maintain that juvenile facility; and the DHR accepted that responsibility.
The County Judge/Executive, Bill Wells, on March 18, 1981, received a letter from the Commissioner of the DHR, Suzanne Turner, giving official notice of the closing of the juvenile detention center effective June 1, 1981, and thus terminating the lease.
Paragraph 4, page 5, of the lease provides in part that the Department and Floyd County shall have the right to terminate this lease at any time upon sixty days written notice. That notice was given. Paragraph 4 of the lease also provides that "The control of the facility may also be returned to the Floyd County Fiscal Court upon agreement of the parties."
Subsection (8) of KRS 208.130 reads:
"Upon the department's agreement to accept control of a secure detention facility for juveniles as prescribed in subsection (7) of this section, the department shall continue to operate the facility unless or until by mutual agreement the control, operation and maintenance of the facility is returned to the fiscal court."
In considering KRS 208.130(7), (8), and (9), it is our opinion that paragraph (4), page 5, of the lease, in providing that "The Department and Floyd County shall have the right to terminate this lease at any time upon sixty days written notice, " is precisely that vehicle used by Floyd County and the DHR as a mutual agreement to terminate the lease, and thus provide for the relinquishment of the DHR's control, operation and maintenance of the juvenile detention facility. Thus the giving of notice of lease termination by the DHR was a valid exercise of its rights under paragraph 4, page 5, of the lease and under KRS 208.130(8).
It would be an unreasonable construction to say that the legislature intended that once the DHR took over the facility it would have to continue to operate, control and maintain it until and unless the Floyd Fiscal Court agreed to let it off the hook.
Judge Cammack, for the Court, in Swift v. Soutneastern Greyhound Lines, 294 Ky. 137, 171 S.W.2d 49 (1943) 51, wrote that "It is never to be presumed that the legislature intended to enact an absurd statute. . . ."
When the Floyd Fiscal Court and the DHR signed the lease, they mutually agreed to a stipulation of termination of the lease on 60 days written notice. The practical effect of the lease termination is that the control, operation and maintenance of the facility, involving Floyd County juveniles, has been returned to the Floyd Fiscal Court.