FRANKFORT — The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, rocked by a series of scandals in recent months, wants to know where it has failed. It is hoped an “internal process audit” will yield the answers, Transportation Secretary James Codell said Thursday.

        The agency also is working on its image. Daily radio spots that usually touch on safety were rescripted this week to extol the “dedicated men and women” of the cabinet itself.

        “We're taking measures to come to grips with the problems we've been having,” Mr. Codell said in a news conference.

        Those problems have occurred on multiple fronts.

        A former cabinet bridge inspector is under federal indictment for allegedly extorting payoffs from contractors. Two others are accused in lawsuits of doing the same thing.

        Two reports — one by the Federal Highway Administration, the other by an attorney hired to do an internal review — said there was fraud in a cabinet program for minority road contractors.

        Meanwhile, the FBI and state attorney general's office are investigating allegations that someone in the cabinet's driver's licensing office altered driving records for a fee.

        “These situations revealed the need” for a top-to-bottom review, Mr. Codell said. “I can't and don't profess to know everything that goes on” in each division. “But we are going to come to grips with the problem.”

        The audit is to be done by a team headed by Joe Famularo, a former state and federal prosecutor. Gov. Paul Patton appointed him deputy transportation secretary last month and said Mr. Famularo had “carte blanche to investigate anything he believes should be investigated.”

        Mr. Famularo said the team would give Mr. Patton a final report no later than May 15. In the meantime, “we're not just sitting on our duffs,” Mr. Famularo said. A number of personnel changes have been made, “and several more are anticipated,” he said.

        The cabinet is “99 percent good people. There are some rogue employees. A lot of them are not here anymore,” Mr. Famularo said.

        Mr. Famularo said he intended to recruit advisers from academia and from his contacts in the Justice Department to critique his performance and that of the committee.

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