The state's second largest school district, is facing tough scrutiny over its financial management.

Fayette County Public Schools announced in May that it had a $16 million budget shortfall, and it's now under investigation by the state auditor.

Today, Superintendent Demetrius Liggins was taken to task before a legislative panel in Frankfort.

Our Mackenzie Spink has more.

As we begin tonight's legislative update.

There are countless things that I could say that I wish would have happened.

It should have happened that, needed to happen.

And I know that.

But while those matters are being examined very thoroughly, I want to be clear.

I want this to be very clear that in my role as superintendent, I understand that the buck stops with me, and I accept that.

That admission by Fayette County Public School Superintendent Demetrius Liggins didn't sway lawmakers on the education panel as they found his presentation lacking.

Senator Stephen West, who co-chairs the committee, said Liggins failed to deliver what was requested.

I just have to be very honest.

I'm very disappointed, in what was was brought forward.

We requested revenue numbers and budget numbers over a ten year span.

Probably pretty easy to get your hands on.

And so there were a lot of colors and graphs and ranges, but we really were looking for numbers like actual numbers.

Okay.

Senator Lindsey Titchener pressed Liggins on credit card statements that a constituent had collected through an open records request.

She quizzed Liggins over expenses that she found questionable.

I counted August $127,000 of travel in August, with 52,000 of that at the Galt House.

For your reimbursements alone for travel is $60,000.

That's unbelievable.

That's truly astonishing.

How can you know with fidelity that the expenditures in this are legitimate?

When I when you see tens of thousands of dollars going towards chick fil A, ax throwing tickets for wicked ice cream, insane amounts of expenditures for for all kinds of random things.

How can you ensure to the taxpayers that these expenditures are legitimate for the purposes of educating the students in Fayette County schools?

Liggins says FcPS staff have to travel further to find professional development opportunities that are relevant to their needs.

We have found and our staff, teachers, administrators, etc.

have found that much of the professional learning and professional development provided in Kentucky really focuses on role school systems, which is a majority.

I don't, fault anyone for that.

There are many opportunities, to really network with other school systems throughout the nation that are similar to us, have similar demographics, are urban centers within their own states that we, take advantage of other, probably, trips that probably could not have happened.

More people went on them than they should have.

Absolutely.

I will not sit here and say that's not the case.

Several lawmakers questioned why executive leadership staff hadn't reported the budget shortfall to Liggins earlier.

Senator West posed a question about workplace culture at FcPS that could potentially stifle that kind of communication.

Do you feel is there a toxic work environment at Home Office, Fayette County?

I wouldn't call it a toxic environment by any stretch of the imagination, but there is an environment where, there's trust not only at and we talked about trust here with the community.

I think there's some trust issues that are occurring and the, the leadership level of the, the district as well.

And so I think that is something that certainly needs to be addressed.

Superintendent Liggins says plans are in the works to fix the district budget deficit, like eliminating professional development opportunities that require travel.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Mackenzie Spink.