From left: Arkansas Department of Education Chief of Staff Courtney Salas-Ford, Arkansas PBS Executive Director and CEO Courtney Pledger, PBS Chief Financial Officer Jason Kuna and ADE CFO Greg Rogers answer questions from the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee on Friday, September 13, 2024. (Screenshot/Arkansas Legislature)
An audit into Arkansas PBS’ “procurements and related processes” continued to raise concerns from state lawmakers about the educational television network’s business practices at a Friday meeting.
The Legislative Joint Auditing Committee sent the audit report to its State Agencies subcommittee to be discussed further next month before the full committee will vote to file it.
Auditors have referred the report — which examined the network’s expenditures, purchasing procedures and “internal controls” from July 1, 2021 to Dec. 30, 2023 — to Attorney General Tim Griffin and 20th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Carol Crews.
The committee asked Arkansas Legislative Audit to conduct the investigation in November 2023 after the regularly scheduled 2022 audit of the network indicated that officials might have sidestepped state laws related to contract bidding. Purchases of more than $20,000 would have triggered a bidding process, and the network made several purchases just below that threshold from the same company, according to the 2022 audit.