Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
By Kiera Riley | State Affairs
Attorney General Kris Mayes said her office was still analyzing the public monies investigation into the Arizona Department of Education over misspending in the Empowerment Scholarship Account program and hinted at taking next steps sometime this summer.
Mayes announced in December her office was considering litigation against Superintendent Tom Horne, followed by an audit, after the department started automatically processing all purchases under $2,000.
Her office then followed up with inquiries into auditing practices and demanded the department adjust the automatic processing threshold, find a way to stringently filter out unallowable items, and comb out tutors and educators ineligible to be paid by the program due to their past disciplinary histories.
In response, Horne claimed the department had a low misspending rate and made promises to implement advanced auditing of improper purchases using artificial intelligence. The department shifted the burden of vetting vendors to accountholders but said it continued to monitor educator discipline cases and the ESA database for more egregious cases.
