Indiana Economic Development Corp. Says 2025 Audit's Issues 'Addressed' While New One Launched

State officials faced hard questions on Tuesday about travel spending and oversight at the Indiana Economic Development Corp.

The Braun administration told the State Budget Committee that it has fixed every oversight issue raised in last year’s state audit, even as a new review gets underway by the state attorney general’s office, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Democratic Sen. Fady Qaddoura pressed commerce secretary Chuck Goodrich on whether the problems identified in the October 2025 audit had been fully resolved.

“We have studied the audit,” Goodrich told the committee. “I know that we have corrected, I think, every item on the audit.”

That 2025 review detailed failures by the IEDC to investigate undisclosed conflicts of interest among agency executives, alongside observations regarding missing conflict-of-interest policies for companies donating to the affiliated Indiana Economic Development Foundation.

Clinton Bohm, the IEDC’s chief financial officer, told the committee that the actual findings have all been addressed.

“The observations, we’re working on policies to put into place so that we can operate in a way that would alleviate those,” Bohm said.

Last year’s forensic analysis revealed that over a five-year period, about $11 million of the foundation’s $13 million in spending was for travel, meals and entertainment. Officials had said last year the foundation was “moving toward wind-down” following those revelations.

Instead, the foundation continues to operate with additional transparency policies.

“We actually built a business plan for the foundation that’s very specific on where the money is raised and why we raise it,” Goodrich said.

While the agency works to implement those internal fixes, state Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office has hired the same national consulting firm that conducted last year’s audit to review foundation spending.

The attorney general’s office signed a contract in August with FTI Consulting costing up to $275,000. The contract, which wasn’t announced publicly by the office, directs FTI to examine a “risk-based sample selection” of 100 travel and entertainment expenses paid between January 1, 2022, and June 30 of this year, spanning parts of former Gov. Eric Holcomb’s tenure and Braun.

The contract instructs the firm to evaluate whether expenditures were reasonable, properly documented, and consistent with the foundation’s mission. FTI was previously paid $800,000 for the 2025 audit.

That earlier report was forwarded to the state’s Office of Inspector General, though no actions against any person or entity have been disclosed.

Griffin Reid, a spokesman for the administration, told the Capital Chronicle that the administration remains committed to cooperating with investigators.

“Since Governor Braun launched the investigation and audit of the IEDC/IEDF in April of 2025, both entities have been under a clear directive to cooperate with all state agencies seeking information, including the OIG and the OAG,” Reid said.