Request By:
Mr. Vic Hellard, Jr.
Director
Legislative Research Commission
Capitol Building
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in response to your letter of January 22, in which you raise an additional question concerning the proposed redistricting legislation. You refer to a statement by the Court in Anggelis v. Land, Ky., 371 S.W.2d 857 (1963), quoted in OAG 82-18 to the effect that the framers of the Constitution must have realized that for two years after each redistricting there would be some persons in the state who would not be represented in the Senate by a senator of their own choosing. With this statement in mind you seek our opinion as to whether a redistricting plan that creates a five-year hiatus rather than a two-year hiatus between the effective date of a redistricting bill and the remainder of a senator's term who has been placed in another district, contravenes the residential requirements in Section 32 of the Constitution.
Our response to your question would be in the negative. The difference in the time frame mentioned in your question, created by virtue of the adjustment schedule of the terms of members of the legislature required under the amendments to Sections 32 and 33 of the Constitution, is of no legal significance, in our opinion. As we pointed out in OAG 82-18, the Anggelis decision basically held that a senator placed in a district other than that from which he was elected for the remainder of his term, did not violate Section 32 since he does in fact represent all of the people of the state -- those who elected him and those who did not.
With this basic principle in mind and the fact that the two-year hiatus referred to in the Anggelis case merely reflected the factual situation as then existing, we are of the opinion that the five-year hiatus created by the current redistricting bill is constitutional.