Court Opinion

ID: 9766316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:41:13.03983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:21.304788
License: Public Domain

MILLIKEN, Judge.
These are appeals from judgments upholding the constitutionality of statutory salary increases for local constitutional officers in excess of the nominal $7,200 maximum allowed by Section 246 of the Constitution, and we have consolidated the cases on appeal. Before acceding to the legislative mandate directing payment of the salary increases, the State Commis*363sioner of Finance and other officials felt compelled to have the approval of this Court, and these cases are the result.
The 1964 regular session of the General Assembly enacted Senate Bill No. 84, (Chapter 109) granting salary increases to county clerks, sheriffs, circuit clerks, county judges and county jailers within the maximum limit of $9,600 “to be paid solely out of the statutory fees and salaries received * * * during the calendar year.” Though ineptly worded, it is reasonably clear that the Act intends that the maximum compensation of $9,600 shall be paid, if the fees of the office, together with such salary as the fiscal court may authorize to be paid (but is not required to) under authority of KRS 64.720, will reach that amount. The questions presented here are whether the increase in the maximum compensation from $7,200, the amount stated in Section 246 of the Constitution, to $9,600, the maximum amount prescribed by the statute, is constitutional, and, secondly, whether the increases permitted by the statute may be paid during the current terms of office of the respective officers when Sections 161 and 23S of the Constitution prohibit changes in the salaries of officers during their terms of office.
In June, 1962, this Court took cognizance of what every housewife had known for a long time—that the purchasing power of the dollar had been steadily declining, and so we said in our opinion in Matthews v. Allen (1962), Ky., 360 S.W.2d 135, a case which presaged the determination of the issues presented in the cases at bar, “The net result of our consideration is that the salary provisions of Section 246 of the Constitution may be interpreted and periodically applied to all constitutional officers in terms which will equate current salaries with the purchasing power of the dollar in 1949 when Section 246 was adopted.”1 This principle of construction accomplishes the dual purposes of Section 246; it preserves a reasonable ceiling on salaries and permits the payment of reasonable salaries, both equated with the 1949 purchasing power of the dollar.
When the 1964 General Assembly raised the salary máximums for the offices here involved it did so in conformity with that decision, for the Consumers’ Price Index of March, 1964, disclosed that the purchasing power of the dollar had decreased approximately one-third since the adoption of Section 246 in 1949. The maximum salary increase granted by the General Assembly is exactly one-third.
We reaffirm our decision in Matthews v. Allen, above, because it expresses in current values the initial values which, are the essence of Section 246 (the same as tax assessments are intended by Section 172 to express current values). We further conclude that the salary increases here involved do not violate the purpose of the constitutional provisions prohibiting changing compensation during current terms of office, for on the theory of construction we have adopted, the salaries of the various offices are merely being kept abreast of their initial value or purchasing power. The Commissioner of Finance and other officers shall authorize payment of the salary increases directed by the General Assembly.
The judgments are affirmed.
MONTGOMERY and HILL, JJ., dissenting.

. Referred to by the American Judicature Society as “an historic decision * * * and Kentucky has provided a pattern for dealing with” a problem every government must face. Golden Jubilee issue of the Journal of the American Judicature Society (December, 1963), Vol. 47, Number 7, page 127.