The Rotary Club of Hopkinsville presented the family of fallen Hopkinsville Police Department Officer Phillip Meacham with a donation at Tuesday’s meeting and heard from State Auditor Mike Harmon.
During this year’s Rotary Auction, Rotarians held a separate fundraiser for Officer Meacham’s family that included auctioning a custom wooden flag piece in an effort to raise funds—Tuesday, Rotary President Scott Cowan, Sheriff Tyler DeArmond and HPD Lt. Adam Smith presented them with $5,671.
Officer Meacham was killed in the line of duty on Paulette Court in Hopkinsville on March 29, 2018.
State Auditor Mike Harmon says his office continues to diligently follow the data as they perform the necessary audits on multiple facets and organizations of government, all the way down to the local sheriff’s office and fiscal courts. During the recent session of the Kentucky General Assembly, Harmon says they worked with legislators to pass Senate Bill 144, which will make audits cheaper and easier on local governmental entities.
He says they conducted a massive audit of the state unemployment system and made several concerning discoveries, including the fact that several employees of that system violated policies by interacting with their own case files.
Other findings include over 400,000 unemployment related emails going unread, state employees who were employed receiving unemployment payments, and unclear numbers on just how much money still owed through that system to beneficiaries.