"We have righted the ship, let's keep sailing"
This type of statement reflects a confident public narrative. It suggests that past problems have been corrected and that the county is now operating on a stable financial course.
For taxpayers, that is exactly the kind of assurance they want.
But public finance is not measured by messaging alone—it is measured by evidence, documentation, and tangible results.
The audit reports issued between 2019 and 2024 provide a continuous, independent record of the county’s financial condition and internal controls.
Those records present a more complex picture. While the current administration can point to inherited deficiencies and some areas of improvement, the audits also document issues that have persisted across multiple years—and in some cases, problems that have evolved rather than fully resolved.
A closer review of the reports helps clarify what has changed, what has not, and what that means for the county’s financial management moving forward.
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The older audits under the prior administration, especially 2019–2022, show a broad pattern of recurring weaknesses in budgeting, debt disclosure, reconciliations, procurement, interfund transfers, disbursements, jail controls, and capital assets.
In 2019 the county had multiple documented findings, including inaccurate bank reconciliations, bid-law violations, budget failures, and an underreported capital asset listing by $11,494,316 (2019 Audit, p. 55).
In 2020 the problems expanded to 16 findings (pp. 3-4), including occupational tax controls, debt disclosure, purchase orders, procurement, PPC/bond records, and debt activity understated by $1,074,364 (2020 Audit, pp. 9 & 75); the same audit says principal debt was understated by $15,381,239 and interest by $1,542,021 on the quarterly liabilities section (2020 Audit, p. 69).
In 2021 many of those same issues were still repeat findings, including segregation of duties, occupational tax receipts, budgeting, interfund transfers, disbursement controls, debt disclosure, PPC/bond records, jail checkout sheets, jail disbursements, purchase orders, and procurement.
It can be argued that this is why the people of Pulaski County wanted change - and that would likely be accurate.
That said, the audits for 2022–2024 do not show a clean turnaround.
The 2022 audit listed 13 findings (p. 4), which was up from 2021 with many issues left unresolved, including segregation of duties, occupational tax receipts, budgeting, interfund transfers, disbursements, debt disclosure, PPC/bond records, jail disbursements, procurement, debt activity, and capital assets.
The 2023 audit still had 9 findings (p. 4); it resolved the jail fund deficit and daily jail checkout sheets, but left most core financial-management issues unresolved.
The 2024 audit shows some genuine improvement:
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The county corrected 2023 findings on segregation of duties, occupational tax receipts, general disbursement controls, PPC/bond records, and procurement.
But 2024 also shows that budget problems, debt reporting/budgeting, jail disbursement controls, and capital assets remained uncorrected.
The 2024 summary schedule is the clearest documentary proof of both improvement and persistence.
So the fairest conclusion is this:
The current administration can credibly say it inherited a mess, but it cannot credibly say it has cleaned it up. Yet.
The documents support a more limited claim, which is... it has cleaned up some inherited controls, especially around receipts segregation, occupational tax controls, procurement, PPC/bond records, and some general disbursement practices by 2024.
However, the audits also show that several of the most consequential issues either persisted through the current administration or perhaps worsened, especially budgeting, debt reporting, and capital asset controls.
The strongest evidence of improvement is in resolved findings.
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The 2023 audit marked the 2022 jail fund deficit and jail daily checkout-sheet issue as resolved, and
the 2024 audit marked 2023 segregation of duties, occupational tax controls, general disbursement controls, PPC/bond records, and procurement as corrected.
That is real progress, and it undercuts any claim that nothing changed.
The strongest evidence of continuing problems is the budget/debt/capital-assets cluster.
Budget findings repeat from 2019 to 2024.
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In 2020, multiple funds exceeded budget and the quarterly budget was understated by $156,826 (p. 67).
In 2021, road fund capital projects exceeded budget by $517,280 and ARPA budget entries were out of balance (pp. 44, 60).
In 2022, omitted debt activity understated the financial statement by $566,823 (pp. 10, 23, 38) and left the road fund capital projects line $412,660 overbudget (pp. 38, 44, 74).
In 2023, the road fund overspent capital projects by $2,175,481 plus additional overruns in fire, 911, and clerk-storage funds (pp. 36,44, 67, 69).
In 2024, the audit again found the budget was not properly prepared or reviewed and found debt reporting failures severe enough to understate principal by $8,503,933 and interest by $575,248, while leaving the road fund overbudget by $1,090,586 after adjustment (pp. 68, 73).
That is not legacy cleanup complete; it is an unresolved control problem continuing deep into the current administration.
There are also areas where things appear to have gotten worse:
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Occupational tax controls were a repeat issue from 2020 and 2021, but in 2023 the problem produced a material misstatement of $1,627,734 in occupational tax receipts (p. 66).
Debt-reporting deficiencies persisted across the audit period and remained material, with multi-million-dollar misstatements identified in both 2020 and 2022 and continued reporting failures noted in 2024.
Capital assets were already a problem in 2019 with $11,494,316 underreported (p. 55), then in 2022 the beginning balances did not agree to the prior year by $19,000,555 (p. 33), , and in 2024 the county still had no updated capital asset schedule and the report explicitly says the former administration’s assistant had maintained it, but the current administration also did not know it needed updating or that a physical inventory was required (p. 76).
That makes capital assets the clearest example of an inherited problem that was still not brought under control.
The audits support the argument that the current administration inherited longstanding financial control problems, but they do not support the argument that those problems have been fully cleaned up.
Our review finds that the record is mixed and here is the bottom line for concerned taxpayers:
Several inherited findings were corrected by 2024, but the most serious recurring weaknesses in budgeting, debt reporting, jail disbursement controls, and capital asset management remained unresolved through the latest audit, and some misstatements became very large during the current administration.
If we have made an error in any of our analysis, please reach out, with evidence so that we can make corrections.
The audit reports used in this analysis were taken from the Kentucky Auditors site. We have added the documents here and provided the link to the search page: