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less than fifteen thousand, and cities and towns of the fourth class, five per centum; cities and towns of the fifth and sixth classes, three per centum ;' and counties, taxing districts and other municipalities, two per centum: Pro- ' vided: Any city, town, county, taxing district or other municipality may contract an indebtedness in excess of such limitations when the same has been authorized under laws in force prior to the adoption of this Constitution, or when necessary for the completion of and payment for a public improvement undertaken and not completed and paid for at the time of the adoption of this Constitution: And provided further, If, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, the aggregate indebtedness, bonded or floating, of any city; town. county, taxing district or other municipality, including that which it has been or may be authorized to contract as herein provided, shall exceed the limit herein prescribed, then no such city or town shall be authorized or permitted to increase its indebtedness in an amount exceeding two per centum, and no such county, taxing district or other municipality, in an amount exceeding one per centum, in the aggregate upon the value of the taxable prop erty therein, to be ascertained as herein provided, until the aggregate of its indebtedness shall have been reduced below the limit herein fixed, and there after it shall not exceed the limit, unless in case of emergency, the public health or safety should so require. Nothing herein shall prevent the issue of renewal bonds, or bonds to fund the floating indebtedness of any city, town, County, taxing district or other municipality.

SEC. 159. Whenever any county, city, town, taxing district or other munic pality is authorized to contract an indebtedness, it shall be required, at the same time, to provide for the collection of an annual tax sufficient to pay the nterest on said indebtedness, and to create a sinking fund for the payment of the principal thereof, within not more than forty years from the time of Putracting the same.

SEC. 160. The Mayor or Chief Executive, Police Judges, members of legis: ative boards or councils of towns and cities shall be elected by the qualified Tuters thereof: Provided, The Mayor or Chief Executive and Police Judges of the towns of the fourth, fifth and sixth classes may be appointed or elected as provided by law. The terms of office of Mayors or Chief Executives and Police Judges shall be four years, and until their successors shall be qualiñed; and of members of legislative boards, two years. When any ctiy of the first or second class is divided into wards or districts, members of legis lative boards shall be elected at large by the qualified voters of said city, but so selected that an equal proportion thereof shall reside in each of the said wards or districts; but when in any city of the first, second or third class,' there are two legislative boards, the less numerous shall be selected from and elected by the voters at large of said city; but other officers of towns or cities' shall be elected by the qualified voters therein, or appointed by the local authorities thereof. as the General Assembly may, by a general law, provide; but when elected by the voters of a town or city, their terms of office shall be four years, and until their successors shall be qualified. No Mayor or Chief" Executive or fiscal officer of any city of the first or second class, after the expiration of the term of office to which he has been elected under this Con stitution, shall be eligible for the succeeding term. "Fiscal officer" shall not include an Auditor or Assessor, or any other officer whose chief duty is not the collection or holding of public moneys. The General Assembly shall prescribe the qualifications of all officers of towns and cities, the manner in and causes for which they may be removed from office, and how vacancies in such offices may be filled.

SEC. 161. The compensation of any city, county, town or municipal officer shall not be changed after his election or appointment, or during his term of office; nor shall the term of any such officer be extended beyond the period for which he may have been elected or appointed.

SEC. 162. No county, city, town or other municipality shall ever be authorized or permitted to pay any claim created against it. under any agreement or contract made without express authority of law, and all such unauthorized agreements or contracts shall be null and void.

SEC. 163. No street railway, gas, water, steam heating, telephone, or elec tric light company, within a city or town, shall be permitted or authorized to construct its tracks, lay its pipes or mains, or erect its poles, posts or other apparatus along, over, under or across the streets, alleys or public grounds of a city or town, without the consent of the proper legislative bodies or boards of such city or town being first obtained; but when charters have been heretofore granted conferring such rights, and work has in good faith been begun thereunder, the provisions of this section shall not apply.

SEC. 164. No county, city, town, taxing district or other municipality shall be authorized or permitted to grant any franchise or privilege, or make any contract in reference thereto, for a term exceeding twenty years. Before granting such franchise or privilege for a term of years, such municipality shall first, after due advertisement, receive bids therefor publicly, and award the same to the highest and best bidder; but it shall have the right to reject any or all bids. This section shall not apply to a trunk railway.

SEC. 165. No person shall, at the same time, be a State officer or a deputy officer, or member of the General Assembly, and an officer of any county, city, town, or other municipality, or an employee thereof; and ne person shall, at the same time, fill two municipal offices, either in the same or different municipalities, except as may be otherwise provided in this Con stitution; but a Notary Public, or an officer of the militia, shall not be inel igible to hold any other office mentioned in this section.

SEC. 166. All acts of incorporation of cities and towns heretofore granted and all amendments thereto, except as provided in section one hundred and sixty-seven, shall continue in force under this Constitution, and all City and Police Courts established in any city or town shall remain, with their present powers and jurisdictions, until such time as the General Assembly shall pro vide by general laws for the government of towns and cities, and the officers and courts thereof; but not longer than four years from and after the firs day of January, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-one, within which time the General Assembly shall provide by general laws for the government of towns and cities, and the officers and courts thereof, as provided in this Constitution.

SEC. 167. All city and town officers in this State shall be elected or appointed as provided in the charter of each respective town and city, until the general election in November, 1893, and until their successors, shall be elected and qualified, at which time the terms of all such officers shall expire; and at that election, and thereafter as their terms of office may expire, all officers required to be elected in cities and towns by this Constitution, or by general laws enacted in conformity to its provisions, shall be elected at the general elections in November, but only in the odd years, except members of municipal legislative boards, who may be elected either in the even or odd years, or part in the even and part in the odd years: Provided, That the terms of office of Police Judges, who were elected for four years at the August election, eighteen hundred and ninety, shall expire August thirty-first, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, and the terms of Police Judges elected in November, eighteen hundred and ninety-three, shall begin September first, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, and continue until the November election, eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, and until their successors are elected and qualified. SEC. 168. No municipal ordinance shall fix a penalty for a violation thereof at less than that imposed by statute for the same offense. A conviction or acquittal under either shall constitute a bar to another proseention for the same offense.

REVENUE AND ΤΑΧΑΤΙΟΝ.

SEC. 169. The fiscal year shall commence on the first day of July in each year, unless otherwise provided by law.

SEC. 170. There shall be exempt 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: places of burial not held for private or corporate profit, institutions of purely public charity, and institutions of education not used or employed for gain by any person or corporation, and the income of which is devoted solely to the cause of education; public libraries, their endowments, and the income of such property as is used exclusively for their maintenance; all parsonages 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; household goods and other personal property of a person with a family, not exceeding two hundred and fifty dollars in value; crops grown in the year in which the assessment is made, and in the hands of the producer; and all laws exempting or commuting property from taxation other than the property above mentioned shall be void. The General Assembly may authorize any incorporated city or town to exempt manufacturing establishments from municipal taxation, for a period not exceeding five years, as an inducement to their location.

SEC. 171. The General Assembly shall provide by law an annual tax, which with other resources, shall be sufficient to defray the estimated expenses of the Commonwealth for each fiscal year. Taxes shall be levied and colected for public purposes only and shall be uniform upon all property of the same class subject to taxation within the territorial limits of the authority evying the tax; and all taxes shall be levied and collected by general laws.

The General Assembly shall have power to divide property into classes d to determine what class or classes of property shall be subject to local taxation. Bonds of the State and of counties, municipalities, taxing and school districts shall not be subject to taxation.

Any law passed or enacted by the General Assembly pursuant to the provisions of or under this amendment or amended section of the Constitution, Gassifying property and providing a lower rate of taxation on personal propny, tangible or intangible, than upon real estate, shall be subject to the referalum power of the people, which is hereby declared to exist to apply only to this section, or amended section. The referendum may be demanded by the people against one or more items, sections or parts of any Act enacted pursuant to or under the power granted by this amendment, or amended section. The referendum petition shall be filed with the Secretary of State not more than four months after the final adjournment of the Legislative Assembly which assed the bill on which the referendum is demanded. The veto power of the Governor shall not extend to measures referred to the people under this section. All elections on measures referred to the people under this act shall be at the regular general elections, except when the Legislative Assembly shall order a special election. Any measure referred to the people shall take effect and become a law when approved by the majority of the votes cast thereon, and not otherwise. The whole number of votes cast for the candidates for Governor at the regular election last preceding the filing of any petition shall be the basis upon which the legal voters necessary to sign such petition shall be counted. The power of the referendum shall be ordered by the Legislative Assembly at any time any acts or bills are enacted, pursuant to the power granted under this section or amended section, prior to the year of one thousand nine hundred and seventeen. After that time, the power of the referendum may be ordered either by the petition signed by five per cent of the legal voters or by the Legislative Assembly at the time said acts or bills are enacted. The General Assembly enacting the bill shall provide a way by which the act shall be submitted to the people. The filing of a referendum petition against one or more items, sections or parts of an act shall not delay the remainder of that act from becoming operative.1

SEC. 172. All property, not exempted from taxation by this Constitution, shall be assessed for taxation at its fair cash value, estimated at the price it would bring at a fair voluntary sale; and any officer, or other person

1 Amendment proposed by the legislature of 1914 and ratified at the election of November 2, 1915.

authorized to assess values for taxation, who shall commit any willful error in the performance of his duty, shall be deemed guilty of misfeasance, and upon conviction thereof shall forfeit his office, and be otherwise punished as may be provided by law.

SEC. 173. The receiving, directly or indirectly, by any officer of the Commonwealth, or of any county, city or town, or member or officer of the General Assembly, of any interest, profit or perquisites arising from the use or loan of public funds in his hands, or moneys to be raised through his agency for State, city, town, district or county purposes shall be deemed a felony. Said offense shall be punished as may be prescribed by law, a part of which punishment shall be disqualification to hold office.

SEC. 174. All property, whether owned by natural persons or corporations, shall be taxed in proportion to its value, unless exempted by this Constitution; and all corporate property shall pay the same rate of taxation paid by individual property. Nothing in this Constitution, shall be construed to prevent the General Assembly from providing for taxation based on income, licenses or franchises.

SEC. 175. The power to tax property shall not be surrendered Or suspended by any contract or grant to which the Commonwealti shall be a party.

SEC. 176. The Commonwealth shall not assume the debt of any county, municipal corporation or political subdivision of the State, upss such debt shall have been contracted to defend itself in time of war, to pel invasion or to suppress insurrection.

SEC. 177. The credit of the Commonwealth may be given, pledged or loaned to any county of the Commonwealth for public road purposes, and any county may be permitted to incur an indebtedness in any amount” fixed by the county, not in excess of five per centum of the value of the taxable property therein, for public road purposes in said county, provided said additional indebtedness is submitted to the voters of the county for their ratification or rejection at a special election held for said purpose, in such man'r as .may be provided by law and when any such indebtedness is incurred by any county said county may levy, in addition to the tax rate allowed under sees tion 157 of the Constitution of Kentucky, an amount not exceeding tweĆ cents on the one hundred dollars of the assessed valuation of said count & for the purpose of paying the interest on said indebtedness and providing a sinking fund for the payment of said indebtedness. 2

SEC. 178. All laws authorizing the borrowing of money by and on behalf of the Commonwealth, county or other political subdivision of the State. shall specify the purpose for which the money is to be used, and the money so borrowed shall be used for no other purpose.

SEC. 179. The General Assembly shall not authorize any county or subdivision thereof, city, town, or incorporated district, to become a stockholder in any company, association or corporation, or to obtain or appropriate money for, or to loan its credit to, any corporation, association or individual, except for the purpose of constructing or maintaining bridges, turnpike roads, or gravel roads: Provided, If any municipal corporation shall offer to the Commonwealth any property or money for locating or building a Capitol, and the Commonwealth accepts such offer, the corporation may comply with the offer.

SEC. 180. The General Assembly may authorize the counties, cities or towns to levy a poll tax not exceeding one dollar and fifty cents per head. Every act enacted by the General Assembly, and every ordinance and resolution passed by any county, city, town, or municipal board or local legislative body, levying a tax, shall specify distinctly the purpose for which said tax is levied. and no tax levied and collected for one purpose shall ever be devoted to another purpose.

SEC. 181. The General Assembly shall not impose taxes for the purposes

2 Amendment proposed by the legislature of 1908 and ratified at the election of November 2, 1909. The Code of 1915 gives this amendment as section 157a.

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of any county, city, town or other municipal corporation, but may, by general laws, confer on the proper authorities thereof, respectively, the power to assess and collect taxes. provide for the payment of license fees on franchises, stock used for breeding The General Assembly may, by general laws only, purposes, the various trades, occupations and professions, or excise tax; and may, by general laws, delegate the power to counties, towns, cities and other municipal corporations, to impose and collect license fees on a special or stock used for breeding purposes, on franchises, trades, occupations and professions. And the General Assembly may, by general laws only, authorize cities or towns of any class to provide for taxation for municipal purposes, personal property, tangible and intangible, based on income, licenses or tranchises, in lieu of an ad valorem tax thereon: Provided, Cities of the

rst class shall not be authorized to omit the imposition of an ad valorem X on such property of any steam railroad, street railway, ferry, bridge, gas, water, heating, telephone, telegraph, electric light or electric power comJany.3

SEC. 182. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prevent the General Assembly from providing by law how railroads and railroad property shall be assessed and how taxes thereon shall be collected. And until otherwise provided he present law on said subject shall remain in force.

SEC. 183

EDUCATION.

The General Assembly shall, by appropriate legislation, proide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State. SEC. 184. The bond of the Commonwealth issued in favor of the Board ✅ Education for the sum of one million three hundred and twenty-seven thousand llars shall constitute one bond of the Commonwealth in favor of the Board Erication, and this bond and the seventy-three thousand five hundred dollars of the stock in the Bank of Kentucky, held by the Board of Education, and its Proceeds, shall be held inviolate for the purpose of sustaining the system of mon schools. The interest and dividends of said fund, together with 4y sum which may be produced by taxation or otherwise for purposes of common school education, shall be appropriated to the common schools, and to no other purpose. No sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools until the question of taxation is submitted to the legal voters, and the majority of the votes cast at said election shall be in favor of such taxation: purposes, and for the endowment and maintenance of the Agricultural and Provided, The tax now imposed for educational Mechanical College, shall remain until changed by law.

SEC. 185. The General Assembly shall make provision, by law, for the payment of the interest of said school fund, and may provide for the sale of the stock in the Bank of Kentucky; and in case of a sale of all or any part of said stock, the proceeds of sale shall be invested by the Sinking Fund Commissioners in other good interest-bearing stocks or bonds, which shall be subject to sale and reinvestment, from time to time, in like manner, and with the same restrictions, as provided with reference to the sale of the said stock in the Bank of Kentucky.

SEC. 186. Each county in the Commonwealth shall be entitled to its proportion of the school fund on its census of pupil children for each school year; and if the pro rata share of any school district be not called for after the second school year, it shall be covered into the treasury and be placed to the credit of the school fund for general apportionment the following school year. The surplus now due the several counties shall remain a perpetual obligation against the commonwealth for the benefit of said respective Counties, for which the Commonwealth shall execute its bond, bearing interest at the rate of six per centum per annum, payable annually to the Counties respectively entitled to the same, and in the proportion to which they are entitled, to be used exclusively in aid of common schools.

Amendment proposed by the legislature of 1902 and ratified at the election of November 3, 1903.

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