Request By:
James Hite Hays, Esq.
Shelby County Attorney
Shelby County Courthouse
501 Main Street
Shelbyville, Kentucky 40065
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
This is in reply to your letter asking whether the Shelby County Parks and Recreation Board, established by the city of Shelbyville and Shelby County, is required to have an annual audit. The Recreation Board is financed by funds from the city and county and from revenues received from park activities.
Presumably the Parks and Recreation Board was established pursuant to KRS 97.035 which authorizes two or more political subdivisions to jointly establish, maintain and conduct a parks and recreation system. The Board which operates such a parks and recreation system shall be a body corporate for all purposes and shall elect from its membership a chairman, secretary and treasurer.
KRS 91A.040 provides in part that each city, with some exceptions, shall after the close of each fiscal year cause each fund of the city to be audited. This provision is applicable to funds of a city and not to funds of a joint city-county entity such as a city-county parks and recreation board.
KRS 67.080(1)(d) provides in part that a fiscal court may have the accounts of all county officers audited when necessary. However, the members of a joint city-county parks and recreation board are not county officers and, therefore, the provisions of KRS 67.080(1)(d) are not applicable to such a board.
KRS 65.065 sets forth the requirements in connection with the audit of funds of a district. KRS 65.060 defines a "district" as the term is used in KRS 65.065 and the definition of a district does not extend to a city-county parks and recreation board created pursuant to KRS 97.035.
While we, therefore, cannot find any statute requiring that the accounts of a city-county parks and recreation board created pursuant to KRS 97.035 be audited, there is a provision dealing with the publication of financial statements that needs to be considered. KRS 424.220 states in part as follows:
". . . [E]very public officer of any school district, city, county, or subdivision or district less than a county, whose duty it is to collect, receive, have the custody, control or disbursement of public funds, every officer of any board or commission of a city, county or district whose duty it is to collect, receive, have the custody, control or disbursement of funds collected from the public in the form of rates, charges or assessments for services or benefits, shall at the expiration of each fiscal year prepare an itemized, sworn statement of the funds collected, received, held or disbursed by him during the fiscal year just closed, unless he has complied with KRS 424.230. . ."
In OAG 79-19, copy enclosed, which dealt primarily with the tort liability of a city-county parks and recreation board established pursuant to KRS 97.035, we said that the courts might hold that such a board is an autonomous political subdivision subject to the same immunity as the state and county. That same opinion further said as follows:
". . . In the meantime, we think there is substantial logic in the view that the board is immune, since one of its co-creators [county] is immune, and since the board may be aptly characterized as a political subdivision and an agency of the state [not a branch of the central state government]."
As a political subdivision, a city-county parks and recreation board created pursuant to KRS 97.035 would be subject to the requirements of KRS 424.220 relative to the publication of an annual financial statement.