Request By:
Murvel Eugene Combs, Corporate Counsel
Lexington Fayette Urban County Government
The Municipal Building
136 Walnut Street
Lexington, Kentucky 40507
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Martin Glazer, Assistant Attorney General
You seek an opinion as to whether jail employees of the Fayette County Detention Center are required to receive the same benefits as those received by other urban county government employees under H.B. 440.
You state that such employees receive 0 holidays per year, 8 sick and vacation hours per month, that non-exempt employees (sergeant and below) are paid at one-half the hourly rate for all hours over a 40-hour week.
H.B. 440 was enacted primarily to upgrade local jails and to pay monies from the state to achieve that purpose.
The law requires the Bureau of Corrections to promulgate jail standards pursuant to recommendation of the Jail Standards Commission (Section 6, codified as KRS 441.011) on various subjects including jail operation, record keeping, and administration, (1)(a)(3).
There is nothing specifically in the Act itself which requires that jail personnel receive the same benefits that other county personnel receive. Standards and regulations may be subsequently adopted that require certain minimum wages be paid and other benefits be observed, but these have not yet been formalized.
When you stated that jail employees were paid one-half of the hourly rate for over 40 hours work per week, you must have meant one and one-half of the hourly rate. Such is required by virtue of the state minimum wage law and, specifically, KRS 337.285. County and city employees are covered by the Kentucky Minimum Wage Law.
It is doubtful that the regulations promulgated pursuant to H.B. 440 would require that jail employees receive the same benefits as other county employees, in the event that some counties would not provide basic benefits which the bureau would consider minimal for jails. Rather, the emphasis would be on basic minimums for jail personnel irrespective of what other county employees were receiving.
So, to answer your question specifically, H.B. 440 itself does not require that jail employees' benefits be the same as benefits received by other county employees. Jail employees are subject to the state minimum wage law which requires that certain employees, not excepted, be paid time and a half for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week.