Request By:
Martha Belwood, Administrator
State Agency for Social Security
Department of Finance
P.O. Box 557
Frankfort, Kentucky 40602
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Martin Glazer, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of this Office as to whether the Boone County Planning Commission is an independent political subdivision for social security purposes or should come under Boone County Fiscal Court's obligation.
You have forwarded the original Memorandum Agreement and two supplemental agreements.
Counsel for the Commission points out that neither the Boone County Fiscal Court nor any of the legislative bodies of the cities that comprise the Planning Unit are actual employers of the Planning Commission's staff. The Commission, itself, makes decisions regarding hiring and salaries of staff members.
The nature of the entity in question may determine who has the right to consider whether the employees are to be covered by social security -- the Commission, itself, or Boone County Fiscal Court.
KRS 61.310(5) defines "political subdivision" as:
"in addition to counties, municipal corporations and school districts, includes instrumentalities of the Commonwealth, of one or more of its political subdivisions or of the Commonwealth and one or more of its political subdivisions, and any other governmental unit thereof."
The Boone County Planning Commission, hereafter Commission, is created pursuant to KRS Chapter 100, particularly, in this case, KRS 100.121 which provides:
"(1) At any time, the legislative bodies of cities and the fiscal court of the county containing the cities may enter into an agreement to form a joint planning unit by combining planning operations in order that they may carry out a joint city-county planning program. Combinations may include any combination of cities with their county or parts thereof; provided, however, that no self-excluded city in such county may form an independent planning unit.
"(2) When a planning unit includes a county and a city of the first class, then all other cities within the county shall also be part of the unit."
Accordingly, its agreement originally covered Boone County, the City of Hopeful Heights, the City of Walton, and the City of Florence, all within Boone County. By subsequent agreement in 1976, the City of Union was added, and Hopeful Heights no longer appears in the agreement. By 1980, a second supplemental agreement was entered between Boone County Fiscal Court and the Cities of Florence, Walton, and Union to allow each individual body to have its own board of adjustment with jurisdiction within the territorial boundaries of their particular legislative bodies.
It is apparent from considering the statutes and the documents forwarded that the Planning Commission is a separate political subdivision consisting of cooperative members representative of other political subdivisions in a cooperative, joint effort to provide consolidated planning and zoning activities for the various political subdivisions which make up the entity. The fact that the membership consists of a county and cities all within the same county does not alter its unique and separate existence. They could have consisted of members from cities outside Boone County such as authorized by KRS 100.123 or even within 100.121 itself.
Therefore, in our opinion the Commission is a separate political subdivision for purposes of the definition of a political subdivision found in KRS 61.420(5) and not part of Boone County which is governed by Boone County Fiscal Court.