Request By:
Mr. John D. Sims
Robertson County Attorney
Mt. Olivet, Kentucky 41064
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The sheriff's function and fees are central to your letter. It reads in part.
"Since the county clerks started collecting ad valorem property taxes on motor vehicles in January, 1984, our sheriff has expressed dissatisfaction with the reduction in his fees for collecting taxes due to this change. The sheriff has appeared before the fiscal court and requested that the court hire and pay a deputy for his office, or in the alternative to approve a salary or some other form of compensation to make up for the money he is losing by not collecting motor vehicle taxes. Please send me a written opinion stating whether you feel that there is any law to support the sheriff's request for monetary assistance from the fiscal court in this situation."
KRS 134.800, as amended by H.B. 208, 1984 session, provides that the county clerk shall be the collector of all state, county, city, school, and special taxing district ad valorem taxes on motor vehicles. Under KRS 134.140(1), the sheriff, by virtue of his office, shall be collector of all state, county, and district taxes, unless the payment thereof is, by law, especially directed to be made to some other officer. Here the collection of ad valorem taxes on motor vehicles is expressly entrusted with the county clerks, as above mentioned.
As concerns the sheriff, his function and his fees are only those expressly described by statute. The General Assembly can vest him with functions, and it can take them away, as it did here, and assign them to other officers. However, this is subject to the limitation that the sheriff's office, as a constitutional office, may not be stripped of all duties and rights so as to leave it an empty shell. For obviously, as the legislature cannot abolish the constitutional office directly, it cannot do so indirectly by depriving the incumbent of all his substantial prerogatives or by practically preventing him from discharging the substantial things appertaining to the office. See Johnson v. Commonwealth, 291 Ky. 829, 165 S.W.2d 820 (1942) 829. Here, in 1984, no one can successfully claim that the sheriff has been stripped of his office. He is still a busy officer with several functions to perform. The reduction of his fees, caused by this innovative legislation, is a matter he can only address to the General Assembly.
Apparently the sheriff wants the fiscal court to make up, in some way, for his loss of revenue. The answer is that the fiscal court has no authority to make up for such loss. Under S.B. 8, 1984 session, the sheriff can petition the fiscal court in writing to review his number of deputies and their salaries and adjust the same, up or down; during his term. See KRS 64.530(4), as amended by S.B. 8. However, the number of deputies and their salaries will be based upon such factors as statutory functions of the sheriff's office, the county population, ability and skill of deputies to be employed, and the reasonableness of such salaries under the total work environment. Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958).
While a fiscal court has the responsibility for aiding a sheriff in the payment of the sheriff's necessary expenses of his office, where the sheriff's revenues are insufficient, and where the county has available money through a properly budgeted item, the fiscal court has no authority to merely in the abstract make up a sheriff's loss of revenue occasioned by a statutory enactment.