Request By:
John L. Arnett, Esq.
City Attorney
128 West Dixie Avenue
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
This is in reply to your letter raising a question concerning a tourist and convention commission.
You state that the city has established a tourist and convention commission called the Elizabethtown Visitors and Information Commission. Your question is if a commissioner is appointed pursuant to KRS 91A.360 and qualifies as being a member of a local hotel and motel association, does the commissioner vacate his office automatically or does he serve out the remainder of his term if he terminates his employment with the hotel or motel with whom he had been employed.
KRS 91A.360(1)(a) and (b) deals with the persons appointed to a recreational, tourist and convention commission from lists submitted by the city and county hotel and motel associations. The only qualifications required of such persons is that their names come from the lists submitted by the local hotel and motel associations. There are no statutory requirements that these persons retain their positions with the hotel and motel industry during their terms on the commission. There are no statutory requirements that the persons whose names are placed on the lists submitted by the local hotel and motel associations be employed with the local hotel and motel industry when their names are submitted. However, it seems obvious that the local hotel and motel industry would probably nominate persons who are employed in that industry or, at the least, those who are sympathetic to its concerns and objectives.
KRS 91A.360(6) provides in part that a commissioner of a recreational, tourist and convention commission may be removed from office by the mayor and the county judge/executive, as provided in KRS 65.007. That statute states in part that an appointed member of the governing body of a special district may be removed from office by the appointing authority after a hearing with notice for inefficiency, neglect of duty, malfeasance or conflict of interest. Thus, this statute could only be utilized to remove a commissioner if his alleged offense comes within one of the four specific grounds enumerated in the statute.
It is stated in 63 Am. Jur. 2d Public Officers and Employees, § 38 that, generally, the qualifications for holding public office are prescribed either by constitutional provision or legislative enactments. The qualifications which relate to an office must be complied with by persons seeking that office and those persons must have the prescribed qualifications at the proper time.
Since there are no constitutional or statutory provisions requiring that the members of a recreational, tourist and convention commission selected from lists submitted by the local hotel and motel associations actually be employed by hotels or motels or that they retain their employment with hotels or motels during their tenure with the commission, persons selected from lists submitted by hotel and motel associations who leave their positions with the hotel and motel industry while serving on such a commission, do not automatically vacate their positions and may serve out the remainder of their terms of office, presuming they do not take up residence in another state.