When the framers of Kentucky's present constitution drew up its provisions in 1891, there were no paved roads and the automobile was just a glimmer in Henry Ford's mind. The only means of leaving the earth was by way of a hot air balloon.
But the framers could imagine, from past experience, public corruption and misadministration. They created a state constitutional office of auditor to attempt to keep everyone honest. They forbade spending public money on private property. They said one person could not hold more than one public job at the same time. And they limited the amount of new debt the state could undertake to $500,000 without a vote of the people.
Little in their wildest nightmares could those same framers have conjured up Knott County, Kentucky in 2007.
State Auditor Crit Luallen this week released the latest Knott County audit for 2006 and it's a doozie. She questioned $13.5 million in county spending out of a total of $14 million. The Knott Fiscal Court borrowed $8.2 million with 20-year bonds and added $2 million in coal severance tax funds and simply turned it over to a private youth foundation to operate a youth center the county didn't own. The foundation was headed by the county judge-executive.
Fiscal Court also gave $400,000 to an ATV Center that, again, it didn't own.
County employees were paid salaries and then hired as consultants and paid a second salary for doing the same jobs.
Miles of asphalt was laid, some on roads the county didn't have control over. Major purchases were made without competitive bids being taken.
Luallen turned over her findings to just about every state and federal law enforcement agency except Homeland Security. The day before the public release of the audit, the FBI raided the Knott County Courthouse and carted off its financial records.
When the General Assembly reformed Kentucky's public schools in 1990, it wisely provided for state takeover of school systems that fail financially, administratively or academically.
It's time for the General Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment to do what the framers failed to do, provide for state takeover of a county like Knott where misadministration or outright corruption is so rampant it astonishes even a state auditor who's seen just about everything.