FRANKFORT, Ky. — Was a reported $6,000 outlay for a Lexington Legends baseball game an example of executive branch overspending or a chance to give hundreds of foster children their first professional internship?
In Frankfurt, it depends on who you ask.
A long-running conflict over executive spending reached the Capitol this week, with the state’s Republican auditor and Democratic governor facing off over a spending presentation that Gov. Andy Beshear called a “political attack.” That expense for the Lexington Legends was a drop in the bucket among dozens highlighted in Feb. 10 House Appropriations and Revenue Committee testimony from Auditor Allison Ball’s office, including several that ran into the millions.
The report was not a full audit, noted Ball, who presented it to lawmakers alongside General Counsel Alex Magera. It was a review of FY 2025 spending in eMARS, which tracks state salaries and other spending, as Kentucky lawmakers work during the current session to craft the commonwealth’s FY 2027-28 budget.
But the review highlighted several expensive tabs and other eMARS entries that might raise some eyebrows.
Nearly $7.5 million was for out-of-state travel — Beshear has made several trips nationally in the past year, but some of that total was raised by the Kentucky Department of Education and other state offices — while more than $23 million was for in-state travel.
More than $16 million was spent on training, conferences, food and trade shows, with the presentation often detailing where that money is said to have gone, down to the menu items at the meals that were served to attendees.
Nearly $70 million was spent on “temporary labor services,” including about $8 million by the Department of Vehicle Registration’s Driver Licensing Division, which was investigated for an alleged scheme involving temporary workers, described by Magera as “an alleged black market in the underground sale of IDs to undocumented non-citizens.”
And just over $118 million fell into the “other” spending bucket, used by entities when they “don’t know where to spend,” Magera said.
Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball, left, and General Counsel Alex Magera speak at a state House budget committee meeting on Feb. 10, 2026.
Rep. Jason Petrie, R-Elkton, the committee chairman and sponsor of this year’s executive branch budget bill, noted that the presentation was not “an exhaustive list of points of interest” and there are “just some that have been brought out that are strange, or their aggregates are strange, or the process is strange or unknown.”
“The money the state gets is tax revenue,” Petrie said, buttressing his remarks by telling attendees he wasn’t there to judge. “If you get a bunch of regular people in a room and you start cutting 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? It’s just a good time to take a moment (because) we’re looking at the (budget) base.”
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There are some big numbers on this list. And at his weekly news conference two days later, Beshear acknowledged there were “expenses here and there that we can do better with.” The executive budget bill passed by the state legislature in the 2024 session included more than $125 billion in spending over the next two years.
But the report presented to the House committee was prepared without input from executive staff members who could have provided key context, the governor said — “I don’t think it can be (called) a report, because they never asked us questions, and you have to do that if it’s an audit report” — and amounted to a “political attack” by the auditor’s office.
Some entries were inaccurate or not properly characterized, he said. A $198,000 outlay by the Department of Aging and Independent Living described as a media campaign for the state’s Senior Meals Program amid a funding shortfall for the service was actually a “membership fee they have to pay to be part of a federally mandated public education program,” Beshear said.
Some listed expenses were paid for with federal funds and not taxpayer dollars, he added, and disputed the description of the alleged driver’s license scheme as a “black market” of sales to “undocumented immigrants,” a controversy under investigation that led to five indictments in early February — “U.S. attorneys were very clear that none of the people involved were in the country illegally.” The recently announced charges were related to licenses issued to non-citizens who were in the US legally.
And while the $6,000 line item for the Lexington Legends baseball game was one of the smaller expenses highlighted, Beshear said the money is “purely federal.”
“And what did he do? Four hundred and thirty foster kids got to see what is probably their first professional baseball game,” he said. “During the game, the team runs commercials that educate people about how to be a foster parent and why you might want to be a foster parent.”
Gov. Andy Beshear speaks at his annual State of the Commonwealth address in January 2026. Beshear rejects a report by Auditor Allison Ball that highlighted spending by the executive branch.
Removing his office from the process as the report was being compiled, Beshear added, meant that key context was left out of the presentation.
“They didn’t ask questions because it was just a political attack,” he concluded. “If you’re in the auditor’s office, just do the job. That’s all we ask. We have nothing to hide.”
It’s not the first time Beshear has clashed with Ball, an Eastern Kentucky Republican who was elected auditor in 2023 after spending eight years as state treasurer.
The governor criticized Ball before the session for rejecting possible budget cuts in her office, saying she told him her staff had found “wasteful spending” that could be used to balance the budget amid a projected deficit of more than $150 million.
Ball sued Beshear last year over the administration’s failure to implement Senate Bill 151 of 2024, passed with bipartisan support in an effort to support kinship care in Kentucky. The governor said he was unable to implement it because the required amount of $20 million was not included in the budget.
The lawsuit was dismissed in September, but the issue has simmered among lawyers along with Republicans in the legislature. It was one of 11 bills in recent years that Beshear said he was unable to implement because of a lack of adequate funding — in response last spring, House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said the legislature would “remove any doubt about what it doesn’t have the ability to spend money to continue” in the 2026 budget cycle.
Petrie’s initial budget proposal this year was much smaller than in previous years, described by the longtime Western Kentucky representative as “bare bones.” During this session, cabinet members and other administration officials appear before budget review subcommittees to make their case for funding.
Ball also sued Beshear and other administration officials in 2024 for access to iTWIST, a database that tracks abuse and neglect cases in Kentucky, which has since been resolved. And Beshear called a 2024 audit by her office of significant problems within the Department of Juvenile Justice a “political tool” after the report blamed the problems on the executive branch’s “lack of leadership.”
For her part, Ball supports the report presented to the House committee.
In an emailed statement after Beshear’s Feb. 12 comments, her office said everything in the report “came directly from eMARS as recorded by Beshear administration officials” and the presentation was “simply a spending analysis of what is reported by the governor’s administration in eMARS.”
The email provided invoices related to some of the expenses Beshear disputed, including a $6,000 bill from the Lexington Legends to the Department of Community-Based Services for a sponsorship that included a 30-second commercial to be played during home games — there is “no evidence we’ve been given to show that this expense was for foster children, along with a statement of 800 USD” invoice billed to the Department of Aging and Independent Living, with “12-month statewide PEP advertising campaign” listed as the description.
“In short, the governor has failed to address all of the most troubling spending issues I’ve testified about and has provided no evidence to support his claims about the spending he spoke about today,” Ball’s office said in a statement after Beshear’s comments.
Lawmakers will continue to meet in mid-April as they work through the legislative session and continue crafting House Bill 500, this year’s executive budget bill.
Contact Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on the Louisville Courier Journal: Beshear responds to auditor’s allegations of wasteful spending