Questions mounting, KY auditor accelerates FCPS audit, targets spring 2026

Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball is working to complete her audit of Fayette County Public Schools “much faster” and months earlier than anticipated — by spring 2026.

That is a shift from when Ball told the Herald-Leader in August that the special examination of the cash-strapped district would take until the end of 2026.

“What I actually am really hopeful and I think we’re going to be able to do, is to get it out, probably spring of next year,” Ball said on a taping this week of Kentucky Newsmakers that will air at 11:30 a.m. Sunday on WKYT.

“I think we figured out a path forward where we can isolate the financial issues, do a penny by penny review, tell them what they need to do to be able to get their house in financial order, really fix this school district for the future financially. I think we can do that in a way that’s much faster,” said Ball, a Republican.

“It needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible,” she said.

Fayette Superintendent Demetrus Liggins has said the $826.2 million budget the board passed earlier in September is balanced. The district has dealt for the past several months with a budget crisis. That includes a prior $16 million deficit and a severely declining carry-forward balance, from about $43 million to $26.3 million, which Liggins has said is the true contingency.

Ball said her goal is to get the district on financially strong footing, to fix the problems that exist, find out what’s going on and get the district in good shape for the future.

In a response to a Herald-Leader request for information under the Kentucky Open Records Act, Ball’s office said citizens and a local official, who the office did not name, have brought concerns about FCPS directly to them.

Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe, R-Lexington, also publicly called for an audit of FCPS, and there have been numerous media stories and public discussions on the topic.

“The totality of these circumstances led the Auditor to make her decision to conduct a special exam of FCPS ─ not any particular document or complaint,” the response said.

Ball denied the Herald-Leader the specific documents that included complaints, saying they were confidential under the law.

“I heard some rumblings about issues at Fayette County at the same time that I was hearing about Jefferson County, so I had it on my radar screen. But when they came asking for a tax increase, they were saying they were essentially out of money, that means you’re in dire financial shape,” Ball said on Kentucky Newsmakers.

Then Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman weighed in and said FCPS’ process in pursuing the occupational license tax was unlawful.

“So that just ratcheted up in, in my mind, about the importance of getting involved in what’s happening in Fayette County,” Ball said.

Ball said she began working on the special examination early in the summer before she announced it June 10.

“Obviously this is one that is worthwhile. It’s been in the news ever since May and it hasn’t stopped, and we keep hearing more and more things about it,” she said.

The Fayette County Public Schools board is also pursuing an external audit. Community members and some school board members specifically want a forensic audit that digs more deeply into questions.

“My recommendation would be let us do our audit. I would say, ‘save your money.’ Don’t do duplicative efforts,” Ball said.

“We are doing a high quality detailed audit. We’re going to do a penny by penny review of the finances. We hear all the same things the public is hearing, plus we also have whistleblowers that are coming to us all the time about issues. I would say, let us do our job. We’re going to do it well, we’re going to do it right. Save your money. You don’t have a lot.”

With more than 40,000 students, FCPS is Kentucky’s second-largest school district.

“So you’re talking about a lot of children. It impacts an enormous amount of people. And the stories that we keep hearing just show that they’re in a pretty dire woeful financial situation,” Ball said.

Ball said her office is doing a “massive audit” in Jefferson County Public Schools and is contracting with outside help because the audit includes not only financials but also school safety, cell phones in the classroom and other issues.

In terms of the JCPS financial issues, the Courier-Journal has reported that “as the board approved purchases the district didn’t actually have money to cover, the difference between what JCPS had to spend and what it was budgeted to spend (known as a deficit) grew significantly. In fiscal year 2022, the deficit was $47 million. Three years later, it was $295 million.”

Ball said if she gets an appropriation for the FCPS audit from the General Assembly that is similar to what she received for Jefferson County’s audit, that might allow her to bring in some experts to look at other areas of FCPS beyond financials.

“We’ve got Jefferson County at the same time as Fayette County. We only have so many auditors. And if we have a solid appropriation for the General Assembly, it does allow us to contract out, which can expand what we’re able to do,” she said.

“We’ve learned a lot from this Jefferson County audit, and we were more skilled than we even used to be. We learned a lot from our KDE audit. I think we’re more prepared than we used to be,” she said.

Now that she is auditing Fayette and Jefferson County public schools districts, Ball said others are asking, “Hey, could you look at my district too?”

This story was originally published October 4, 2025 at 3:35 PM.