We told you yesterday about a state audit of Kentucky State University, historically black college here in Kentucky that found questionable spending, poor recordkeeping and poor communications between 2018 and 2021.

Those problems contributed to CSU's continuing financial problems, problems that even before the auditors report prompted financial oversight and management by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education.

This afternoon, I spoke to the Council's president, Dr. Erin Thompson, about CSU's problems and what's next.

We'll talk about what's next.

Are we looking at it?

Of course.

Legal, perhaps ramification has financial ramifications, criminal ramifications.

Yeah.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure I can answer that.

To that degree, I think there's a possibility that all three of those could be in place.

And I'll let those that are in the criminal justice system follow up.

I will tell you this very policy implications that we have to follow up on.

We may have to change, as I said, the management plan to address more of those very things that we're going to follow up with the board at KSU and with whomever the permanent president and and his or her management team at KSU.

This is an ongoing item that will take a while.

I mean, it took us a while to get here.

I guess it's going to take us a while to fix it.

But we're going to we're going to fix it in the way that I say it because it deserves to be fixed.

She deserves to be a freestanding HBCU that is not only viable as an institution, but thriving as an institution.

And our goal is to do exactly that.

People will say, Well, I remember that Dr. Aaron Thompson was interim president of K State University for a time.

And to clarify for the viewers, was that the time in which this audit was conducted?

Did that cover any time during your tenure there, and how did you lead the university when it comes to financial standing?

It does not cover my time.

It covers the last three years, I will tell you.

When we left, they had a balanced budget.

They had $23 million in the coffers that we were paying everybody on time.

We were building the student population and we left them in great shape.

They had a strategic plan for the future.

It was in great shape.

Don't get me wrong.

I still have a lot of work to be done.

You know, but I was there for a year.

But financially, we left them in a position that they could grow.

So this is squarely at the feet of the former president, Christopher Brown.

It falls under President Brown's administration.

Absolutely.

The last four years was looked at.

They were not in financial trouble before that.

We've been a that's been identified now by more than one group.

But I will give credit to Greg Rush, who has worked for me, who we sent over in case who hired.

He found that a lot of these things while he was there in that short amount of time.

Once President Brown left, he went over to look at and address that.

And we brought a team together.

We found money CPA in the beginning and 8250, he gave us some more money to really bring a great financial team, along with Travis Powell, who's as my legal lead legal person that took over really looking deeply how we can build the system back and do it in a way that is not only valid, but do it in a way that truly, once again, our students and the citizens of Kentucky deserve.

Tomorrow, we'll have more from Dr. Thompson as he talks about how higher Ed fared during the legislative session and what he's glad didn't pass when it comes to Kentucky colleges and universities.