Opinion ID: 1761033
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: General Principles of Retroactivity.

Text: Precedent shows that the General Assembly has the power to suspend statutes, even if the suspension occurs in a budget bill. [38] Precedent also holds that the General Assembly has the power to suspend statutes retroactively. [39] The question before us today, then, is not whether the General Assembly may retroactively suspend statutes in a budget bill, typically by inserting a clause beginning with the word notwithstanding. The more pertinent question is whether the General Assembly intended to suspend KRS 439.344 and KRS 439.354 retroactively when it enacted HB 406. If so, the DOC obviously acted properly in giving HB 406 retroactive application; and the Pulaski Circuit Court erred in issuing an injunction to stop the DOC from carrying out the General Assembly's intent. If not, however, then the Pulaski Circuit Court acted properly in preventing the DOC from acting in a manner contrary to the General Assembly's intent. We have held that retroactive application of statutes is improper unless the General Assembly clearly manifests its intent for the statute in question to have retroactive application. [40] And although we have held that the General Assembly need not use magic words [41] to evidence its intent for retroactive application, we have forcefully held that there is a strong presumption that statutes operate prospectively and that retroactive application of statutes will be approved only if it is absolutely certain the legislature intended such a result. [42] Optimally, the General Assembly will state clearly that it intends legislation to have retroactive effect, as it did in 1996 when it amended the worker's compensation statutes. [43] The question is more difficult in cases like the one before us in which the General Assembly does not explicitly state that HB 406 must apply retroactively. But a failure to state explicitly that legislation is to apply retroactively does not always mean that a court may not determine that the legislation has retroactive effect. After all, the General Assembly need not use magic wordsinstead, all that is required is that the enactment make it apparent that retroactivity was the intended result. [44] So a reviewing court may discern the General Assembly's intent for legislation to have a retroactive effect by using traditional tools for statutory interpretation. Among the most helpful aids in interpreting HB 406 is a budgetary analysis, such as the one found in Baker .