$6,000 for a baseball game? Beshear, Ball at odds on executive spending

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Was the reported $6,000 expense for a Lexington Legends baseball game an example of excessive administrative spending or a chance to give hundreds of foster kids their first experience at a professional ballpark?

In Frankfurt it depends on who you ask.

A long-running dispute over executive branch spending came to a head at the Capitol this week when the state’s Republican comptroller and the Democratic governor clashed over a presentation on spending that Gov. Andy Beshear called a “political attack.” Lexington Legends spending was just a drop in the bucket among dozens highlighted below. February 10 Parliamentary Appropriations and Revenue Statements Committee From Comptroller Allison Ball’s office, several of them amounted to millions.

Stating that the report was not a full audit, Ball presented the report to MPs together with general counsel Alex Magera. It was a review of fiscal year 2025 spending in eMARS, which tracks state payroll and other spending, as Kentucky lawmakers work to craft the state’s Fiscal Year 2027-28 budget in the current session.

However, the review highlighted some expensive tabs and other eMARS entries that might raise some suspicions.

Approximately 7.5 million dollars gone out of state travel — Beshear took plenty of trips around the country last year, but some of that total was collected by the Kentucky Department of Education and other state offices; More than $23 million went to in-state travel.

More than $16 million was spent on training, conferences, food and trade shows; In the presentation, participants are informed about where this money goes and summarized in detail, down to the menu items of the meals served.

Approximately $70 million was spent on “temporary manpower services”; This includes nearly $8 million from the Vehicle Registry’s Driver License Division, which is under investigation for an alleged scheme involving temporary workers that Magera described as “an alleged black market in the sale of underground IDs to undocumented noncitizens.”

Just over $118 million falls into “other” expenses that organizations use when they “don’t know where to put their spending,” Magera said.

Rep. Jason Petrie, R-Elkton, the committee chairman and sponsor of this year’s executive branch budget bill, noted that the presentation was “not a comprehensive list of points of interest” and that there were “just some that were omitted or whose totals were odd or the process was odd or unknown.”

Petrie told attendees he was not there to make decisions and continued: “The money the state gets is tax revenue.” “If you get a bunch of ordinary people in a room and start crunching these expenses with them, what do you think they’re going to say? What are you going to feel in response? What are you going to think in response? When we look at the (budget) base, it’s time to take some time.”

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There are very big numbers on that list. And two days later, at his weekly news conference, Beshear acknowledged there were “expenses here and there where we can do better.” Executive branch budget bill approved by state legislature in 2024 session including More than $125 billion in spending over the next two years.

But the report to the House committee was put together without input from administrative staff who could provide key context, with the governor saying: “I don’t think it (can be called) a report, because they never asked us any questions, and if it’s an audit report, you have to do that” — and amounted to a “political attack” from the auditor’s office.

He said some entries were incorrect or not properly described. Amid a funding gap for the service, Beshear said the Department of Aging and Independent Living’s $198,000 expenditure, described as going on a media campaign for the state’s Senior Meal Program, was actually “a membership fee they had to pay to be part of a federally required public education program.”

He added that some of the expenses listed were paid for with federal funds, not taxpayer money, and took issue with the characterization of the alleged driver’s license scheme as a “black market” for sales to “undocumented immigrants”; it was an altercation under investigation that led to five indictments in early February — “U.S. attorneys were very clear that none of the individuals involved were in the country illegally.” The indictments announced recently were related to licenses issued to people who are not US citizens and are legally in the US.

While the $6,000 item for the Lexington Legends baseball game was one of the smaller expenses highlighted, Beshear said the money was “all federal.”

“So what did he do? Four hundred and thirty foster kids got to see what was probably their first professional baseball game,” he said. “During the game, the team runs ads educating people on how to become a foster parent and why you would want to become a foster parent.”

Beshear added that leaving his office out of the process while the report was being prepared meant that important context was left out of the presentation.

As a result, he said, “They didn’t ask questions because it was just a political attack.” “If you’re in the auditor’s office, just do the job. That’s all we ask. We have nothing to hide.”

This isn’t Beshear’s first clash with Ball, an Eastern Kentucky Republican who was elected auditor in 2023 after eight years as the state’s treasurer.

The governor criticized Ball ahead of the hearing for pushing back on potential budget cuts in his office, saying he told him his staff had uncovered “wasteful spending” that could be used to balance the budget amid a projected budget deficit of more than $150 million.

Ball also sued Beshear last year over the administration’s failure to implement Senate Bill 151, 2024, which passed with bipartisan support to support kinship care in Kentucky. The governor said he could not implement it because the $20 million needed was not included in the budget.

The case was dismissed in September, but the issue has simmered among Republicans in the legislature as well as lawyers. It was one of 11 bills Beshear has been unable to implement in recent years due to a lack of appropriate funding — in response last spring, House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said the legislature would “eliminate any doubt on issues that it does not have the ability to spend money on going forward” in the 2026 budget cycle.

Petrie’s initial budget proposal this year was much smaller than in previous years, described as “bare bones” by the longtime Western Kentucky representative. During this session, cabinet members and other administration officials will appear before budget review subcommittees to make their case for funding.

Ball also sued Beshear and other administration officials in 2024 over access to iTWIST, a database that tracks abuse and neglect cases in Kentucky, which has since been unraveled. And Beshear called a 2024 audit of his office a “political tool” because of significant problems within the Department of Juvenile Justice, after the report suggested the problems stemmed in part from a “lack of leadership” from the executive branch.

Ball, on the other hand, stands behind the report submitted to the Parliamentary committee.

In an emailed statement following Beshear’s Feb. 12 comments, his office said everything in the report “comes directly from eMARS as recorded by Beshear administration officials” and that the presentation was “simply a review of spending by the Governor’s administration on what was reported in eMARS.”

The email included invoices for some of the expenses that Beshear opposed; these include a $6,000 bill the Lexington Legends sent to the Department of Community Based Services for a sponsorship that included a 30-second commercial to be played during home games. In addition to stating that “there is no evidence provided to us to suggest that this expense was for taking foster children to a baseball game,” the statement also includes a bill for $198,000 billed to the Department of Aging and Independent Living. Its description lists “12-month PEP statewide advertising campaign.”

“In short, the Governor did not address many of the expenditures we testified about and provided no evidence to support his claims about the expenditures he mentioned today,” a statement from Ball’s office sent after Beshear’s comments said. It was said.

Lawmakers will continue to meet through mid-April as they work through the legislative session and continue construction. House Bill 500this year’s executive budget bill.

Contact Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.

This article first appeared in the Louisville Courier Journal: Beshear responds to accusations of wasteful spending by comptroller