Request By:
Representative Richard A. Turner
22nd District
Monroe, Allen, Simpson Counties
House of Representatives
Capitol Building
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: John P. O'Brien, Jr., Assistant Attorney General
This is in response to your Memorandum of October 6, 1982, in which you requested an opinion on whether KRS 279.590, dealing with easements for rural telephone cooperatives, is also applicable to rural electric cooperatives. In view of the specific language of 279.590 and of the statutory context in which this provision appears, it is unlikely that 279.590 applies to electric cooperatives.
The text of KRS 279.590 refers expressly and exclusively to easements that are necessary for the maintenance of telephone lines by rural telephone cooperatives. Further, statutory provisions relating to telephone cooperatives are "complete in themselves." KRS 279.600.
Since electric cooperatives are not mentioned in the body of 279.590, and the statutory terms are complete as they stand, there seems to be no room for implying that 279.590 governs electric cooperatives. Hence, omission from the easement statute of any reference to electric cooperatives was no doubt purposeful and should be interpreted as evidence of legislative intent to include only telephone cooperatives within the scope of the provision.
It is noteworthy that Chapter 279, which pertains both to electric and to telephone cooperatives, is distinctly divided into two subsections: the first subsection, KRS 279.010 through 279.220, relates to electric cooperatives; the second, encompassing KRS 279.310 through 279.600, deals with telephone cooperatives. This demarcation is evidence that the legislature did not intend the provisions of one subsection to be applied to the subject matter of the other subdivision.
Whereas KRS 279.590 empowers telephone cooperatives to obtain easement rights, 279.110(4) grants a similar statutory authority to electric cooperatives. 279.110(4) allows electric cooperatives to "exercise the right of eminent domain in the manner provided in the Eminent Domain Act of Kentucky [KRS 416.540 through 416.680]." Section 416.550 of the Act enables electric cooperatives to move for condemnation of easements. Thus, it would appear that the legislature contemplated that the Eminent Domain Act, rather than KRS 279.590, should control acquisition of easement rights by electric cooperatives.