Request By:
Hon. Vic Hellard, Jr.
Director
Legislative Research Commission
Room 300, Capitol Building
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Re: Effective Dates of Legislation Enacted During the 1993 First Extraordinary Session.
AGO Corr. No. 93-(O)-326.
Opinion
Opinion By: Chris Gorman, Attorney General; Gerard R. Gerhard, Assistant Attorney General
By letter of February 24, 1993, you ask that this office issue an opinion concerning the normal effective date of legislation enacted during the 1993 First Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly, which adjourned sine die (finally for the session) on Tuesday, February 16, 1993. You also ask that our opinion indicate the effective date of Senate Bill 7 (1993 [1st Extra. Sess.] Ky. Acts ch. 4), passed during the session with an emergency provision, as well as certain dates in a "transition schedule" contained in that legislation.
Extraordinary sessions of the General Assembly are authorized by Section 80 of the Constitution of Kentucky.
The effective date of legislation is governed by Section 55 of the Constitution of Kentucky, which provides:
No act, except general appropriation bills, shall become a law until ninety days after the adjournment of the session at which it was passed, except in cases of emergency, when, by the concurrence of a majority of the members elected to each House of the General Assembly, by a yea and nay vote entered upon their journals, an act may become a law when approved by the governor, but the reasons for the emergency that justifies this action must be set out at length in the journal of each House.
(Emphasis added.)
The language "ninety days after adjournment" (emphasis added), quoted above, indicates that the day of adjournment sine die, February 16, 1993, must be excluded in computing the 90 day period set forth in the above cited Constitutional provision, and that the 90th day, here May 17, 1993, through the end of that day, must be included. See Opinion of the Attorney General (OAG) 89-1, and OAG 91-38. It is the opinion of this office that the "normal" effective date for legislation enacted during the 1993 First Extraordinary Session of the Kentucky General Assembly, that is, the effective date for legislation which does not contain an emergency provision or a delayed effective date, is May 18, 1993.
Senate Bill 7, 1993 (1st Extra. Sess.) Ky. Acts ch. 4, the "Kentucky Code of Legislative Ethics," you indicate, contained an emergency clause (Section 92). Accordingly, in keeping with Section 55 (above) of Kentucky's Constitution, the Act as a whole became effective when the Governor tendered the bill, which he had signed, to the Secretary of State on the afternoon of February 18, 1993, thus completing the last act in such regard which he had the power to perform. Constitution of Kentucky, Sections 88 and 91, Johnson v. Sampson, 232 Ky. 648, 24 S.W.2d 306, 310 (1930); Royster v. Brock, 258 Ky. 146, 79 S.W.2d 707, 711 (1935).
Your letter points out that Section 87(13) of SB 7 makes the majority of the bill "effective two hundred ten (210) days after the effective date of this Act," and that earlier subsections within Section 87 establish a "transition schedule" with other specific dates calculated from the effective date of the Act. This "transition schedule" is actually a listing of deadlines within which certain actions called for in Section 87 of the Act are to be completed. You thus ask, in substance, that we indicate the dates of the various deadlines in accordance with the terms set forth in Section 87 of Senate Bill 7.
As the terms in question call for computation of a time period, Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS) 446.030 is applicable. Subsection (1)(a) of that statute provides, in part pertinent here, that:
In computing any period of time prescribed . . . by any applicable statute . . . the day of the act . . . after which the designated period of time begins to run is not to be included. The last day of the period so computed is to be included, unless it is a Saturday, a Sunday, a legal holiday, or a day on which the public office in which a document is required to be filed is actually and legally closed, in which event the period runs until the end of the next day which is not one of the days just mentioned. . . .
Upon application of the above provision, it follows that requirements to be completed within the periods listed below, in view of the effective date of the Act in question being February 18, 1993, must be completed by midnight on the dates indicated:
Within forty-five (45) days of the effective date of this act = on or before April 5th, 1993, since the 45th day is Sunday, April 4.
Within sixty (60) days of the effective date of this act = on or before April 19, 1993.
Within seventy-five (75) days of the effective date of this act = on or before May 4, 1993.
Within ninety (90) days of the effective date of this act = on or before May 19, 1993.
Within one hundred fifty (150) days of the effective date of this act = on or before July 19, 1993, since the 150th day is Sunday, July 18.
Within one hundred eighty (180) days of the effective date of this act = on or before August 17, 1993.
Two hundred ten (210) days after the effective date of this act = September 16, 1993.