Request By:
Ralph Lipps, Personnel Director
Cumberland River
Comprehensive Care Center
P.O. Box 568
Corbin, Kentucky 40701
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Martin Glazer, Assistant Attorney General
This is in response to your request for an opinion concerning conflicts of interest, real or apparent, where several of your employees contract to do work for your agency.
On June 12, 1984, we issued OAG 84-216 concerning the same statute of which you inquired. We enclose a copy of that opinion.
KRS 210.110, subsection (1), is clear:
(1) No officer, employe or agent of the cabinet for human resources, a regional community mental health-mental retardation board or a nonprofit corporation administering a regional community mental health-mental retardation program shall sell anything to any institution, facility or organization under the control of the cabinet . . . if a conflict of interest, real or apparent, would be involved. (Emphasis supplied.)
The conflict is further defined as arising when "the employe . . . has a financial or other interest in the firm selected for award."
Assuming that the agency's employee is in business for himself, the fact that he bid on the project and was low bidder would not negate his violation of the statute, because it uses the term "award." The General Assembly apparently intended to include bid contracts as part of those contracts subject to a conflict of interest.
In substance, it is our opinion that the types of contracts you describe may be the very ones sought to be precluded by KRS 210.110.
The criminal penalty in KRS 210.990(1), applicable to KRS 210.110, appears to be limited only to officers, not employees. An example of an officer would be a member of the regional mental health-mental retardation board itself.
So, depending on the extent of financial interest of the employee in the business bidding on the work, if that interest is not just nominal, the employee would be violating the statute in bidding on work with the mental health-mental retardation board at the same time he is an employee of that board.
There would need to be more specific facts available before we could advise exactly in each instance whether a conflict arises under the statute.