Request By:
Mr. Paul F. Fauri
General Counsel
Dept. for Human Resources
Office of the Counsel
275 East Main Street
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Asst. Deputy Attorney General
You point out in your letter that KRS 147A.080, in connection with the powers of the Board of Directors of an Area Development District, provides that each such board has the power and authority to "provide upon request basic administrative, research, and planning services for any planning and development body located within the district". (Emphasis added).
You add that historically, much of the work of the Area Development Districts (ADDs) has been program administration and planning activities, as opposed to implementation and operation of programs providing direct service delivery.
Your question reads:
"The department would like to know if ADDs can operate programs to provide direct services. Accordingly, we are requesting an attorney general opinion to determine if ADDs can develop, administer, manage and/or directly operate programs designed specifically to provide direct service delivery to citizens of the Commonwealth."
While the Board of Directors may, under KRS 147A.080(3), adopt bylaws and make rules and regulations for the conduct of its business, such business can only concern that business expressly authorized by KRS Chapter 147A or that business which may be reasonably implied from express provisions of those statutes. The ADDs are political subdivisions of the state. See KRS 65.230 and 147A.080(10); and
Bates v. Greenup County, 282 Ky. 268, 138 S.W.2d 463 (1940) 465. See also
Fiscal Court v. City of Louisville, Ky., 559 S.W.2d 478 (1977) 482, in which the Supreme Court of Kentucky came down hard on the principle that in connection with county powers (fiscal court), "The thoughtful, purposeful and deliberate delegation of a known power is required of the General Assembly". The Court thus ruled out, as power delegations, imprecise and vaguely made out powers of a political subdivision.
We have carefully read KRS 147A.080 (powers of board of directors) and KRS 147A.090 (duties of board of directors) . It is our opinion that those statutes only empower the ADDs to engage in the work of program development through administrative, research and planning effort, as described in KRS 147A.080(5). We can find nothing in KRS Chapter 147A that would authorize ADDs to administer, manage, implement or directly operate such programs once developed. Such powers would require new legislation.