Dropping payroll tax is not going to solve FCPS’ self-inflicted wounds | Opinion
On Thursday night, the Fayette County school board discussed its ailing budget while a giant elephant stomped around the virtual edge of the virtual meeting, poking through computer screens with its tusks.
The elephant is, of course, the damning whistleblower complaint against FCPS by its now-demoted budget director Ann Sampson Grimes. It documents all the ways in the past year-and-a-half that she tried to tell her superiors the budget was in trouble and needed to be cut, and all the ways they told her to shut up.
These are allegations, to be sure, but if they are true, then the school board members – the two who ask questions and the three who fall in line – had better make sure that heads roll: Deputy Superintendent Houston Barber, Rodney Jackson, director of financial accounting, and yes, Superintendent Demetrus Liggins, who is supposed to be in charge of this budgetary chaos.
The Aug. 28 meeting led to the final death knell of Fayette’s plans to solve that chaos by raising the payroll tax, and move forward with budget cuts they should have made back in February 2024.
That’s when Grimes said she told Barber the school district needed to cut more than 5% of its budget because of inflationary pressures and uncertainty over federal funding.
Barber, according to Grimes’ complaint, refused to add cuts to the working budget because, “Dr. Liggins needed to get a new contract and board elections were looming.”
Later that spring, cuts to art classes at Cassidy Elementary set off a furor over the district budget. Herald-Leader reporters asked to sit down with budget officials to go over the budget details and were refused numerous times.
In May, board member Amanda Ferguson voted against the 2024-25 budget because her budget questions also went unanswered, and she questioned a $23 million reduction in the fund balance.
Throughout the year, Grimes warned Barber that bigger cuts, more like 10% were needed. She was told to be quiet.
Then there was the surprise $16 million shortfall. Yes, this is a tiny amount in an $850 million budget, but the snowball of denial and secrecy only kept rolling down the hill, getting bigger all the way.
When the payroll tax debacle was thwarted, they put together the Budget Solutions Work Group, but got strangely evasive when the work group focused on the supposed $42 million in the contingency fund.
Turns out, it wasn’t there. It had already been spent, even though spending the contingency is supposed to be approved by the board.
Who tapped into the fund? Unclear. Last night, LIggins said an investigation was launched to figure it out.
School officials may think they have survived this crisis. Liggins has pledged — again — to improve the transparency and communications that parents and the public have been begging for his entire tenure.
Now they will start the hard work of slashing the budget that should have been done six months ago. Dropping the payroll tax will get the Commerce LEX folks off their back.
But that elephant is going to be lurking around. I sincerely hope the Price Building brain trust isn’t planning to make Grimes the fall woman on this. Luckily, it seems she knew who she was dealing with and saved a lot of emails and documents.
With our short attention spans, school board members may think folks will just forget about this whole saga and move on to the next problem.
But if they think they can win back the public’s trust that easily, they have … well, a lot to learn. And may have to happen at the voting booth.
This story was originally published August 29, 2025 at 11:14 AM.
