Request By:
Honorable Joe Wright
State Senator
Fifth District
Harned, Kentucky 40144
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in response to your letter of July 15, in which you relate the following facts and question:
"I have been a member of the Meade County Rural Electric Cooperative Board of Directors since June of 1968. I was elected to the State Senate in 1975. Because of recent decisions relating to members of the Legislature serving on state boards, i.e. the Celleti Case, and more specifically because of the recent article in the Tri-City Times, a Breckinridge County weekly newspaper, related to my serving in the Legislature while serving as a Director on the Meade County Board of Directors, I am hereby asking for an opinion from your office on the following question:
Is it a violation of any state law for a member of the Kentucky General Assembly to serve as a director of a member-owned rural electric cooperative?"
If your question involved an interpretation of KRS 61.070 with respect to the Celletti decision, we could not respond for the reasons indicated in the attached letter to Senator Huff. However, we do not believe the referred-to statute is involved under the circumstances since the Meade County R.E.A. is not a state administrative board or commission, but, on the other hand, is in fact a nonprofit organization created pursuant to KRS Chapter 279. See OAG 79-560, copy attached.
In OAG 73-412, copy attached, referred to in the news article accompanying your request, this office took the position that a manager of a local R.E.A. could also hold an elective public office without violating Section 237 of the Constitution, prohibiting federal office holders holding a state or local office of trust and profit. The news article, incidentally, erroneously construed this opinion as holding that there was a conflict.
The only other conflict of interest
The only other conflict of interst statute affecting members of the state legislature and possibly your qestion is KRS 6.800, prohibiting such members from holding any other state office or employment which would, however, have no effect on your question, since the local R.E.A. is not a state agency.
Under the circumstances, we find no constitutional or statutory objection to your being a member of the General Assembly and at the same time serving as a director for the Meade County R.E.A.