A credit card that had originally been issued to the Clinton County Empowerment Zone by PNC Bank has for some time been being paid monthly by the Clinton County Industrial Development Authority (IDA).

That development became public knowledge after the credit card account was discovered during an audit of the IDA that was being conducted by Lisa Staton for United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) purposes.

Some of the funds used in the IDA program are derived through federal USDA sources and grants, in addition to other sources.

The card had been issued previously to the Clinton County Empowerment Zone in the name of EZ Director Charlette Koger, who later became the Executive Director for the Clinton County IDA.

In February of this year, the IDA voted to lay off Koger as the Executive Director, with an effective date of April 10, 2019.

April Speck was hired as the new Clinton County IDA Executive Director on March 20.

Several years ago, when the Clinton County Empowerment Zone Board of Directors was dissolved and that entity was ended, its remaining resources were placed into the coffers of the IDA board for its use and programs.

After a special meeting earlier in July, the Clinton County IDA, on a motion by IDA Chair Jarred Witham, voted to request copies of the PNC Bank credit card statements, to be forwarded to Staton in relation to the audit being performed.

Last week, the Clinton County News submitted an Open Records Request, seeking copies of those same PNC Bank statements.

After the legal three day-waiting period, copies of the statements were provided to the Clinton County News.

Although the Clinton County News did not specify dates of the requested PNC Bank statements, only the statements from a time period of January, 2018, through March, 2019, were presented.

For the purposes of this article, the NEWS included statements for a period of one year, beginning with March 2018 through February 2019, the last month included in the PNC statements released through the open records request.

On Thursday of last week, after having briefly examined the PNC Statements, Al Gibson, Editor and Publisher of the Clinton County News, submitted a second records request to the Clinton County IDA Board of Directors during its regular meeting.

In that request, copies of canceled checks showing the payments of those PNC Bank statements, as well as detailed transaction reports was requested.

On Monday morning, IDA Attorney Gary Little informed Gibson that the request for those canceled checks would be granted, .

In a letter to Gibson, Attorney Little noted the IDA board didn’t fully understand the requested “detailed transaction reports” and in a follow-up letter, he explained that the request involved a description of exactly what goods or services were involved with each purchase from each company listed on the PNC statements.

The IDA, according to the Kentucky Open Records statutes, would have three days from Monday morning’s request to respond to that second portion regarding detailed transaction reports.

In examining the original PNC Bank statements, it was indicated that, at least for the period between January 2018 to March, 2019, the IDA had been a tremendous customer with the Apple Store, both online, as well as the physical store location in the Lexington, Kentucky Fayette Mall.

During the period for which the PNC statements were mentioned, the IDA has paid for a total of over $20,800.00 in purchases.

While the merchants selling products or services vary during the period, the bulk of the purchases involved Apple products and services.

Without detailed transactions accounts available at press time, it was impossible to tell exactly what those Apple purchases involved, but it was clear that the IDA had been a big customer of Apple products.

Between the period of the furnished statements, the IDA paid for just under $15,000.00 in Apple purchases, with a total of $14,898.53 being listed.

The two months with the most Apple purchase traffic was in October, 2018, when $3,780.54 in Apple products were purchased, and the next month, November, 2018 with Apple purchases amounting to $5,079.42.

It should also be noted that during the one-year period examined, all of the bills were paid on time with Clinton County IDA checks and there were no late charges or interest charges to the account.