KENTUCKY — In 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 how her office uncovered $500 million dollars in financial reporting mistakes as part of the annual Statewide Single Audit of the Commonwealth of Kentucky for Fiscal Year 2024.

This report reviewed over $22 billion in state and federal funds distributed to 370 federal programs managed by 35 different state entities, excluding state universities and retirement systems.

“I say some of it’s human error. Some of it’s computer related, but all of these were, in fact, errors, and this is why you have second eyes to look at things make sure you’re catching this and doing it correctly. Sometimes it’s internal controls, and that happened in a few of these instances where you just don’t have the right controls in place to catch it internally. And whenever we find that, we say, okay, this was the breakdown, and this is how you fix that. So not only do we identify the problems that’s important, we also identify how we got there, so that way those things can be corrected and not happen,” explained Ball.

The auditor’s office identified 10 areas for improvement, known as findings, in the SSWAK Volume I for Fiscal Year 2024 and says the auditor reports that “integrity in the Commonwealth’s financial statements is potentially compromised due to these findings.”

The complete audit, including management’s response to each finding and accompanying recommendations can be found here.

Volume II of the SSWAK, which covers Kentucky’s reporting compliance for each major federal program and associated internal controls, will be released in the coming weeks.

You can watch the full In Focus Kentucky segment in the player above.