State Auditor Allison Ball released the first volume of the annual Statewide Single Audit of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (SSWAK) for Fiscal Year 2025 Monday, saying they found a variety of Executive Branch issues.

Among them:

--More than $1 billion of financial reporting errors that misrepresent Kentucky’s financial position.  This includes the underreporting more than $170 million of expenditures made within Kentucky’s Medicaid program, putting Kentucky’s federal funding at risk. 

--The failure of the Transportation Cabinet to adequately safeguard against illegality and fraud. The Transportation Cabinet’s oversight failures, in part, led to the circumstances which resulted in the federal indictment of Transportation Cabinet temporary workers. The Transportation Cabinet failed to monitor temporary workers, which allowed them to access multiple computers with one login to process multiple licenses at the same time.  

--Failure to properly protect Kentuckians’ personal identifying information so that fraudsters cannot obtain it. The Department of Revenue failed to address security concerns expressed by the Commonwealth Office of Technology following, in part, the completion of a routine hacking test that showed the systems were vulnerable. The test showed that hackers could penetrate Kentucky’s tax information system in mere minutes. The Cabinet for Health and Family Services failed to properly secure personal identifying information within Kentucky’s statewide accounting system, as anyone with access to that system could obtain that information.  

--Charging and potentially charging Kentuckians hundreds of millions of dollars more in taxes than the state should have. The Department of Revenue has charged $33 million more in taxes to Kentucky taxpayers than it should have. The Department of Revenue’s new tax liability system improperly identified $568 million in Kentuckian tax liability for collection that is not actually collectable under state law. The Department of Revenue was unable to explain how it calculates jeopardy tax assessments of approximately $48 million.   

“This Statewide Single Audit presents over a billion dollars’ worth of improvements the Commonwealth of Kentucky can make to ensure Kentuckians are protected, Kentucky law is respected, and Kentucky’s finances are appropriately reported and cared for,” Ball said. “It is vital that state agencies implement the improvements we have recommended in order to ensure Kentuckians are protected from waste, fraud, and abuse.”  

Scottie Ellis, a spokesman with the Governor's Office, said Gov. Beshear was at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky announcing a more than $800 million investment in Georgetown. She offered the following statement:

"He has not had time to review the more than 100-page report the auditor provided directly to the media without publicly releasing, but he has certainly noticed a difference in approach between this auditor – who prioritizes bias and playing political games – from the previous auditors who respected the core auditing principles expected from the office."