States are fully as capable as Washington is of squandering taxpayer money on questionable programs without sufficient oversight. Check out what’s going on in Kentucky right now after a local television investigation of the Louisville African American Think Tank — which, as it turns out, isn’t really a nonprofit and doesn’t do much in the way of public programming:

When Rev. Gerome Sutton first proposed a two-day urban health summit in 2007, he asked the state of Kentucky for $135,000. Included in his budget were $4,800 to rent a projector for two days and $15,500 to print 800 brochures. That’s a cost of almost $20 each.
Besides those seemingly inflated costs, there was one other main problem with the proposal. “The tax exempt number had been suspended,” said the African American Think Tank’s former office manager, who doesn’t want to be identified.
She discovered from an angry donor who was denied a tax deduction that the Think Tank had been dissolved by the state in 2005 for failing to file annual reports. But that didn’t stop the Governor’s Office from awarding the Think Tank a $30,000 grant.

It gets worse — or better, if you’re evaluating the case strictly for entertainment value:

The initial funding, a $10,000 check from the state, was cashed at Vermont Liquors. The owner said that the reason was that Sutton hoped to avoid a long wait to get his money. The liquor store owner charges a 2 1/2 check cashing fee, so he pocketed $250 from the state.
Vermont Liquors is where Sutton’s former employee says most of the Think Tank’s financial business is conducted. “If you asked for a bank statement, he couldn’t produce a bank statement, because you know what? There’s not a bank account,” she said.
When the summit arrived, only a handful of people attended. Yet Sutton submitted an invoice for the rest of his money, charging the state $12,000 for supposedly feeding a thousand people both breakfast and lunch.

The board of the “think tank” includes several felons. Seems appropriate. There is also a flashy car and a red-nosed clown involved, of course.

For more information on wasteful spending in Kentucky, you can check out the transparency work of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions.