Request By:
Mr. Lee Roy Davis, Jr.
Clark County Jailer
P.O. Box 497
Winchester, Kentucky 40391
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Elizabeth E. Blackford, Assistant Attorney General
You have written to ask whether the jailer is required to abide by a County Personnel Code in regards to vacation and sick leave for deputy jailers. Under the recently adopted County Personnel Code, county employees are given two weeks paid vacation and one sick day per month. As jailer, you have been allowing your deputies one week of vacation per annum and sick days as needed, usually three or four a year. Your deputies feel now that they are entitled to the sick leave and vacation benefits provided for in the County Personnel Code, but because of financial difficulties you feel that allowing the extra paid vacation and sick leave permitted under the Code would only serve to place a greater strain on jail operations. Therefore, you want to know whether you must now allow your deputies two weeks vacation and twelve days of sick leave.
Without seeing the County Personnel Code, it is impossible to determine whether the Code is written in such a way as to indicate that it is intended to cover only those county employees, such as road workers, who are under the direct administrative supervision of the fiscal court or whether it also seemingly covers those who hold appointed positions under the various constitutional officers, such as your deputies. Regardless, you, as the jailer, are not bound by that Personnel Code because the legislature has given you administrative control over your deputies. KRS 71.060.
The position of a deputy or assistant to a constitutional officer is not like that of other county employees. Though the fiscal court has the power to fix the amount of the deputy's compensation, it does not have the power to regulate any of the other terms or conditions of the deputy's employment. KRS 64.345; KRS 64.530; KRS 71.060. Instead, that power is vested in the constitutional officer who employs the deputy. It is the constitutional officer who has the power to hire and fire the deputies, who has the power to delineate the duties of deputies and who has the direct autherity to control all of the terms and conditions, including vacation and sick leave, of their employment. KRS 71.060.
Because the fiscal court does not have the power to regulate any of the terms or conditions of the employment of your deputies other than to fix the amount of their compensation, you are not bound by the County Personnel Code as it concerns vacation and sick leave. Instead, you may determine how many vacation and sick days your deputies will receive as a function of your power to determine the terms and conditions of their employment.