State Auditor candidate Kim Reeder visits Woodford County

STATE AUDITOR CANDIDATE Kim Reeder was hosted by the Woodford

County Young Democrats at a reception. Pictured from left, Ian

VanSteenbergh, Annabel Nagel, Reeder and Connor Johnson(Photo by Scott

White)

By Scott White

Woodford Sun Staff

Auditor of Public Accounts candidate on the Democrat side Kim Reeder

rolled into Versailles last Tuesday in a vintage 1993 RV driven by her

brother. Reeder is hitting all 120 Kentucky counties as she builds name

recognition and shares her bona fides and ideas with voters. She is

hoping to turn the trend from the last statewide cycle which saw the

Republican party trounce Democratic candidates in all the down-ballot races.

In this climate, it is fair to call Reeder the underdog in the race

which pits her against the Republican term limited State Treasurer

Allison Ball who is hoping to continue her political career as the next

auditor.

Reeder is a native of Rowan County. After graduating from high school,

she went on to Yale followed by a dual graduate degree program where she

earned a master’s degree in public policy from Duke and a law degree

from North Carolina-Chapel Hill. From there, she went onto a very

successful career in state and local tax law with legal and accounting

firms winding up in the I.T. industry in Silicon Valley for nearly 20 years.

When her mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness, Reeder and her

daughter Ansley returned to Morehead in 2014 so she could be near her

mother in her last year of life.

In discussing her plans, Reeder said she expects “ . . . to focus on

performance audits . . . something the current auditor has not done much

of and which his predecessor, Crit Luallen, used with great effect to

benefit taxpayers.” Reeder says that performance audits are a key tool,

and one she regularly did in the private sector. As she explained, a

performance audit “is when the auditor, by statute, has the ability to

dig into an agency’s operations to see if it is conducting its duties,

engaging in programs and spending its budget in an efficient and

effective way.” As an example, she said “Kentucky just released its

first statewide data report on domestic violence. The auditor can, and

should, evaluate how effective efforts have been in producing the

expected results in decreasing domestic violence and what can be done to

get better results.”

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