KENTUCKY — On this week’s “In Focus Kentucky” program, we’re sitting down one-on-one with Kentucky State Auditor of Public Accounts Allison Ball, R-Ky., of Prestonsburg.
During this segment, Auditor Ball discusses some of her 2025 priorities, which includes her office overseeing over 600 audits over the course of the year, including accounts, financial transactions and performance of state agencies.
“You’re going to be seeing many reports coming out from my office this summer. We’re going to be releasing the Kentucky Department of Education audit, and it’s been a long time since that’s been done extensively. It’s not just about your finances, it’s about our performance. The KDE listed our proficiency rates in Kentucky last October, and they were much lower than they should be. And so this is a great time for us to be looking at on how are we performing, what are we getting out of our curriculum? And we need to make changes. It’s very extensive. So that’s a big one comes out this summer that goes hand in hand with another audit that will be actually next year, and that’s the Jefferson County Public Schools System Audit. Another big one. It’s been, I believe, about 11 years since that’s been done. So it’s high time to do it again. Auditor Edelen did it a little over a decade ago, and it’s time for us to do it again. It’s extensive. It’s not just the finances. In fact, finances are probably a small part of it. It’s about safety. It’s about performance. It’s about our children getting the services they need, our administrators and teachers given what they need is money being allocated correctly. So these are big ones. They’re education focused. They’re student focused this year and then next year, summer and summer, that’s going to be really big projects for us. We have many other ones coming out. So I just tell people, please keep watching. We’ve had some really good stuff released just recently. The Office of the Ombudsman for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services was added to my office last July office, and there’s more information coming out regarding fostering children and vulnerable members of our variety of standpoints. So there’s going to be things coming out from the ombudsman’s office. There’s going to be things coming out from the auditor’s office, many things to watch to help make Kentucky better,” said Auditor Ball.
You can watch the full In Focus Kentucky segment in the player above.
