Request By:
Mr. Ronald Starks
Magistrate
Route #1
Lewisburg, Kentucky 42256
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Several questions in your letter to us relate to the county budget.
First, you ask what is the responsibility of the county judge executive pertaining to the budget and its expenditures.
Pursuant to KRS 67.710(4)(5) and (6), the county judge executive must require county officials using county funds to make detailed annual financial reports to the fiscal court. He is also required, pursuant to KRS Chapter 68, to prepare and submit to the fiscal court an annual budget and administer the budget when adopted by the fiscal court. He is required to keep the fiscal court fully advised as to the financial condition and needs of the county and make such other reports from time to time as required by the fiscal court or as he deems necessary.
As relates to expenditures, the fiscal court approves expenditures. See KRS 67.080 and 67.083. All warrants for payments of funds from the county treasury (except payments from the jail budget part of the county budget -- see KRS 441.008) shall be co-signed by the county treasurer and the county judge executive. KRS 68.020(1). Under KRS 67.710, the county judge is responsible for seeing to it that county expenditures, as authorized by fiscal court, are properly paid.
You say suppose an account in the budget is exhausted. You ask whether the county judge executive must inform the fiscal court prior to any transfer of funds.
Expenditures in excess of the budget are void and illegal. KRS 68.300. Thus where there is money available in some account or accounts, a transfer of money between such funds is authorized pursuant to KRS 68.290. However, the latter statute provides that the fiscal court, as a body, may transfer county money from one budget account to another to provide for emergencies. The order of the fiscal court making the transfer shall show the nature of the emergency and the reason for making the transfer. Remember that the fiscal court cannot transfer money from any sinking fund or special fund raised for a specific purpose until the obligation or purpose for which the fund was raised has been satisfied.
The county judge executive, alone, cannot transfer money between budget funds. Only the fiscal court can do that, under the restrictions we have just outlined. Thus the county judge executive must keep the fiscal court informed as to any need for a transfer of funds.
Of course KRS 68.300 prohibits any appropriation or claim allowance in excess of any budget fund. Any county officer who willfully violates any of the provisions of KRS 68.300 shall be fined not less than $50 nor more than $200. KRS 68.990(7).
The fiscal court should be advised by the executive branch of county government at all necessary times, and at formal meetings, of the status of the county budget and financial affairs.