‘Go look at the other 98%’: Reagan Dunn urges DCHS auditors to look deeper for ‘rampant fraud’

King County is considering bringing in law enforcement and the state auditor after investigators uncovered what they believe is fraud, waste, and abuse involving taxpayer money within the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS).

Some of the alleged fraud included suspicious cash withdrawals, altered documents, and family-linked payments, while county employees reportedly saw these red flags but approved the payments anyway.

King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn joined “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio to answer the question: Was the alleged fraud in the DCHS simply incompetence, or corruption hidden in plain sight?

“I think it’s all of those things. I think there’s a fair bit of incompetence, and I think there is some clear corruption and fraud involved here,” Dunn said. “Some of it is a culture of looking the other way within King County as well, which is maybe the most troubling for me. This is a forensic audit I’ve been calling for for years now. I’m glad it’s happened. I don’t like the results, but the challenge now is to build it back and improve the system so people’s tax dollars are being spent wisely, and according to state law.”

Dunn pushed for a DCHS audit for years, now the findings are out

Gee noted that Dunn has been a major proponent of an audit of DCHS for years now and wondered whether he is awaiting an apology from anyone involved.

“Reagan Dunn has been saying it from the beginning, so I just want to know, when you were raising these concerns behind the scenes, what were the responses of your colleagues, and who owes you a phone call today?” Gee asked.

“That’s funny. I think the state auditor owes me a phone call,” Dunn responded. “Back in 2023, when I wrote the auditor to look at this exact issue, had she engaged three years ago, we probably would have saved a lot, maybe 10s of millions in taxpayer dollars. But it took a little time to get my colleagues sort of on board. My approach to this is, you can’t rub their noses in it; you have to slowly bring them the information. And it will ultimately, as bad as it looks, yield reforms that will make the system better, is my sincere hope.”

Gee noted that there are roughly 2,700 contracts in total at DCHS, but in this case, only 36 of those contracts were sampled. Of the 36, they found 19 instances of fraud. Gee raised the question of whether a higher number would be sampled, say 500, what would that show?

“The truth is, they only audited 2%, and they found all these problems with 2%,” Dunn said. “If they go back and look at the other 98%, you’re going to find a system that’s rampant with fraud, waste, and abuse. What we need to do is fix the system, and there’s going to be fraud, and I’m going to continue to hammer on it, but it’s Pandora’s box. I want to fix the ethics code, fix the inspector general office, fix these grant programs, get rid of these bad actors, and adopt more stringent rules.

“If your agency is corrupted, administering funds, and you’re complicit with it, you’re off the board,” Dunn continued. “A couple of people have been fired. There really hasn’t been any significant effort in prosecution, and that needs to happen. I challenge our prosecutor and our sheriff to pursue cases that are obviously cases of potential fraud, and pursue those to the criminal justice process. The accountability part is very important to building public trust as well.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.