Request By:
Senator Kenneth Gibson
Chairman, Subcommittee on
Natural Resources
Legislative Research Commission
Capitol Building
Frankfort, Kentucky
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Natural Resources, you seek our opinion on a question relating to KRS 150.061 and the appointment and tenure of the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
The Subcommittee requests an opinion of this office on the following question:
"Whether the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Wildlife may be removed at any time at the pleasure of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Commission, or whether the Commissioner may only be removed for cause by the Commission."
The Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources is a state department under KRS Chapter 12. The Department consists of a commissioner, a Fish and Wildlife Resources Commission, and the conservation officers and other agents and employees provided for in KRS Chapter 150. See KRS 150.021.
Under KRS 150.061(1), the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Wildlife shall serve an indefinite term, subject to the removal by the Fish and Wildlife Resources Commission for the same cause and in the same manner in which the governor may remove a member of the commission.
Under KRS 150.022(7), the governor may remove any member of the commission for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in office. See the additional details of removal of members of the commission by the governor in subsection (7) of KRS 150.022.
Thus, under KRS 150.061(1), the Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources serves for an indefinite term and is subject to removal by the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Commission for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in office. Thus the Commissioner of that Department cannot be removed at any time at the pleasure of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Commission. The Commissioner can only be removed for one of the specific causes just mentioned, i.e., for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in office.
The express mention of the grounds of inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in office would exclude any other causes not so expressed.