The executive board of the troubled Bluegrass Area Development District will comply with a directive from the state auditor.
After being instructed to do so by state auditor Adam Edelen, (in no uncertain terms), the executive board of the Bluegrass Area Development District will pursue buying the building it has rented from its former director, Jas Sekhon, and the non-profit Bluegrass Industrial Foundation.
In a blistering audit released earlier this month, Edelen said the current relationship is a clear example of a conflict of interest.
"The lease payments that had been made would more than have paid off that building multiple times. When you consider that the building's value originally was purchased at $1.6 million, a quarter of a million dollars a year just even over the last number of years, we could have built an important asset that could have been used for the public. In my view, what the Bluegrass Industrial Foundation can do to make this right, is they can give the A.D.D. the building that the A.D.D. has paid for these many years."
Bluegrass A.D.D. has been paying BIF about $260,000 per year to rent the building on Perimeter Drive. The auditor's report found a host of other problems at the A.D.D., including excessive spending and possible misuse of federal funds.
Edelen's office forwarded his report to the Kentucky attorney general, the Kentucky State Police and the FBI.
