Request By:
Vic Hellard, Jr.
Director, Legislative Research Commission
Capitol Building
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederic J. Cowan, Attorney General; Ross T. Carter, Assistant Attorney General
You have presented the following question to the Attorney General:
In what manner and to what extent must a religious institution "occupy" real property before it is to be considered exempt from property taxation under the new language of section 170 [of the state constitution]?
Before we undertake our analysis we must establish the role of the Attorney General in providing opinions of such scope and importance. As we said in OAG 78-192 at page 9, "It must be borne in mind that opinions of the attorney general are designed to reflect not the private construction of the author but that construction the attorney general believes the courts would arrive at if faced with similar facts." When a question implicates a constitutional provision, courts have equipped themselves with various tenets of construction, all of which descend from the elementary premise that constitutional provisions, having been adopted directly by the people, reflect the will of the people; and in determining the intent of a provision, courts must determine the intent of the people who voted for it. Contemporary history and the object to be accomplished govern constitutional interpretation. Warfield Natural Gas Company v. Ward, 286 Ky. 73, 149 S.W.2d 705 (1941). Doctrines of construction that guide interpretation of statutes do not operate with the same efficacy in construing constitutional provisions. Fields v. Nickell, 248 Ky. 526, 58 S.W.2d 912, 914 (1933). Courts do not restrict constitutional meaning with technical constructions. Herold v. Talbott, 261 Ky. 634, 88 S.W.2d 303, 305 (1935). Rather, courts gather intent from both the letter and spirit of the constitution, Grantz v. Grauman, Ky., 302 S.W.2d 364, 367 (1957), and give meaning not only to its express provisions, but also to what is implied. Payne v. Davis, Ky., 254 S.W.2d 710, 713 (1953).
Against this background that shepherds our approach we examine the text of section 170 of our constitution before and after its recent amendment. The former version read:
There shall be exempted from taxation public property used for public purposes; places actually used for religious worship, with the grounds attached thereto and used and appurtenant to the house of worship, not exceeding one-half acre in cities or towns, and not exceeding two acres in the country . . . ; all parsonages or residences owned by any religious society, and occupied as a home, or residences owned by any religious society, and occupied as a home, and for no other purpose, by the minister of any religion, with not exceeding one-half acre of ground in towns and cities and two acres of ground in the country appurtenant thereto . . . .
As amended in 1990 by popular vote of the people, the section now reads:
There shall be exempted from taxation public property used for public purposes; places of burial not held for private or corporate profit; real property owned and occupied by, and personal property both tangible and intangible owned by, institutions of religion . . . .
It is at once evident that the amendment broadens the scope of the exemption dramatically. The former exemption applied only to places of worship and parsonages, each not exceeding one-half acre in cities or two acres in the country. The current exemption applies to all tangible personal property, all intangible personal property, and all real property owned and occupied by institutions of religion. In our opinion, the voters who adopted the amendment intended to accomplish, and did accomplish, a fundamental change in the state's approach to taxation of churches. Whereas the former section 170 was quite restrictive in its delineation of exempt property, the current section 170 is obviously permissive in its treatment of the subject. We do not believe that the voting public intended to hobble the church exemption with a narrow, technical, or confining interpretation. Rather, the voters intended to abandon the precise boundaries of the former section 170 in favor of the unrestrained generality of the current version of the exemption.
Our conclusion makes it impossible to supply a clearly delimited answer to your question, for the exemption contains no clearly delimiting language. We believe a proper interpretation should reject the imposition of conditions such as a requirement that the property be used for religious purposes, or that the property be occupied exclusively by the institution of religion, or that the institution of religion be in current rather than future occupation. The voters did not intend to impose such conditions. The phrase "owned and occupied by" must be construed in a general and nonrestricting sense in order that the plainly manifested purpose of those who created the amendment may be carried out. Keck v. Manning, 313 Ky. 433, 231 S.W.2d 604, 607 (1950).