Gaunce Lawyers Up; Asks AG for help
Asks AG for help in blocking transparency of Bridge KY and the Boys and Girls Club’s use of >$4.75M in tax dollars
By Jeff Jobe, Community Publisher
Glasgow City Councilman Patrick Gaunce and his local Glasgow attorney Brian Pack. Gaunce was all smiles as he learns of the ruling in his favor against former Mayor MD Armstrong in an ethics violation complaint. The council-appointed board didn’t see a conflict with Gaunce’s vote against selling city property to the county for the purpose of building the Judicial Center while having property he owned as a potential site. JPI File Photo by Jeff Jobe, Jobe Publishing, Inc.
In January of 2023, Barren County Schools (BCS) determined a local non-profit created and managed by Patrick Gaunce had over-billed the school system by $154,000 and had not paid city occupational taxes for the two previous years.
In February of 2024, the Barren County Progress (BCP) began asking questions regarding this relationship. Since that time the Barren County Superintendent has retired and the person identified as the internal auditor along with his family has stepped away from both Gaunce charities, Bridge KY and the Glasgow Boys and Girls Club.
Naturally, delays with questioning would be expected; however, the BCS has upheld the communities’ rights to know in accordance with KRS Open Record Laws. While the Gaunce charities have consistently experienced time delays or partial answers to questions posed and recently secured local attorney Brian Pack as their point person.
Pack has also had delays, partial details provided and procedural delays to research his appeal, they had 5 days to respond and they did not. No citizen or news outlet is legally required to wait for an attorney to research an appeal to detail how government money is expensed. They were in violation after the 5th business day.
It is now in the hands of Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman. He will advise as to whether KRS Open Records should apply for the two taxpayer-infused Gaunce charities.
The BCS has detailed $2,993,772.58 has been paid to their afterschool employees to the charity “in name only” to eliminate the excessive costs associated with federal overtime and state pension costs. They have confirmed that Gaunce, his accountants and others involved in the January 2023 meeting determined Glasgow and Park City occupational taxes had not been paid for two years. Management of the program and existing school managers received checks without noticing withdrawals not being made.
The school has confirmed taxes began to be paid at that time but nobody followed through on getting the cities’ moneys owed to them until after the BCP began researching tax payments this year.
The school has also verified they have taken over the full payroll processing of the afterschool program and are now paying the federal overtime pay due to the employees and honoring their state pension costs.
However, Gaunce doesn’t believe his charities should be subject to honor open record requests because they don’t anticipate having 25% of their funding coming from government agencies for projected revenues ending fiscal year ending next July.
The questions we ask have to do with more than $3M from Barren County School taxpayers processed through Bridge KY and a $750,000.00 block grant with Cave City, $500,000.00 for Cave City, $500,000.00 for Glasgow from a $1M grant given to the Boys and Girls Club by the Kentucky State Legislature in which Senator David Givens and State Representative Steve Riley helped secure.
It has been almost two years since the Gaunce charity team announced that $2M was going to build a Boys and Girls Club in Cave City. Yet, a partial audit obtained by the BCP shows the Taylor and Polson CPA firm indicated the charity didn’t have enough money on hand to honor the commitments of the money received. Meaning, it has been spent.
Cave City purchased the old Houchens building in downtown Cave City for $70,000 and gave Gaunce a $1 a year agreement to renovate and open a local club in downtown Cave City. Nothing has been done, and he refuses to update the community on how these funds have been spent, provide copies of his board minutes or disclose who board members were at those times and at this time.
The BCP will keep you informed of our success or failure with the Gaunce appeal to the Kentucky Attorney General.
Either way, we have more to come on other examples of how the BCS, Bridge KY and the Boys and Girls Club have a history of commingling their operations and we have requested a sit down with the new Superintendent Amy Irvin so that we can put our community at ease in knowing there are safeguards in place to assure this lack of financial integrity can not continue to happen.
