"The job of chief financial officer is to be a watchdog of public funds," Tom Gallagher said Thursday following a Cabinet meeting. "There have been concerns that there is possibly an accountability issue."

Gallagher sent a letter Sept. 5 to the Department of Education, announcing he was beginning the audit of the department's three voucher programs. The purpose of the audit by the Department of Financial Services is to determine what recommendations should be made to the legislature next year to boost accountability of the programs.

The inquiry is another example of increasing governmental scrutiny of the programs following a summer of Palm Beach Post reports uncovering how loosely written laws have resulted in questionable practices, including:

$350,000 in corporate tax credit vouchers going to an Islamic school with ties to a former University of South Florida professor indicted on terrorism charges.

$200,000 to $400,000 in corporate donations for tax credit vouchers going to Ocala businessman James K. Isenhour, who has filed for personal and corporate bankruptcy protection.

McKay voucher money for disabled children going to consultants to parents who home-school.

Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, has promised that the Senate will study greater financial and educational oversight measures for the corporate tax credit and McKay programs.

Education Secretary Jim Horne has required private schools taking vouchers to start filing basic information to his department, and he has proposed more than a dozen recommendations to lawmakers for imposing qualification and reporting requirements on the organizations that collect corporate donations to pay for vouchers.

Horne also has taken steps to shut down Isenhour's Ocala-based Silver Archer Foundation after the Department of Education had trouble contacting Isenhour with concerns about a possible $400,000 he collected without accounting for it.

Gov. Jeb Bush, asked by reporters about Gallagher's audit before a morning Cabinet meeting, said he was unaware of it.

After noting the greater accountability measures that Horne had already called for, Bush had only a one-word reply when asked whether he was satisfied with Horne's leadership -- "Yes."

Department of Education spokesman Frances Marine did not return calls Thursday about Gallagher's audit.

Denise Lasher, a spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Scholarship Funding Organizations, said her group has always supported accountability and welcomes the state's investigation. The association represents four of the seven organizations that take corporate donations and use them to pay private school tuition.

"The Florida Association of Scholarship Funding Organizations commends the Department for Financial Services and CFO Tom Gallagher for launching a probe of Florida's school choice programs, including the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program," said Lasher, who works for John Kirtley, the Tampa businessman who helped get the corporate tax credit law passed. "We are confident that the probe will vindicate the corporate tax credit program and silence opponents' concerns."

Gallagher said he wasn't sure how long the audits would take, but he expects to have answers within 30 to 60 days. While he said he did not want to comment on any details of his audit before the facts are in, he stressed that it will look at all three of the state's voucher programs.

About 26,000 Florida students used taxpayer dollars last year to attend private and religious schools through the three programs:

McKay Scholarships, worth from $5,000 to $21,000 each, which were created in 1999 and were given to about 9,000 disabled students to attend private schools last year.

Opportunity Scholarships, which are given to students whose public school received an F grade two years out of four. Created in 2000, they went to an estimated 600 students last year.

Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships, which were created in 2001 and allow a company to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $5 million for donations to provide vouchers for poor students. The total amount of tax credits awarded last year to companies was $50 million, allowing about 16,000 students to receive corporate vouchers. This year, the legislature increased the amount companies can donate statewide to $88 million -- money that would have otherwise gone into the state's general fund to pay for services such as public schools.