‘DCYF is a dumpster fire’: WA rep. finds unaccounted funds, but no smoking gun — yet

A wave of fraud cases tied to Minnesota government programs has prompted journalists and state officials to investigate whether the same schemes are occurring in Washington, specifically around child care centers.

Washington State Representative and Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh told “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio that there have been red flags.

“Based on what they found in Minnesota and some other states, we’ve got a pretty strong, so far, circumstantial case. There’s evidence here that in Washington, we’ve been making these payments to phony child care centers,” he said.

Walsh called out the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), which is tasked with keeping track of child care centers in the state.

“DCYF is a dumpster fire. It is a terribly run state agency,” he said. “They, and it’s not the fault of the front-line social workers, they’re actually pretty good. It’s the fault of the middle and particularly upper-level management of that agency — a disaster just badly run, badly organized.”

KIRO host John Curley noted there are 6,000 daycare centers in Washington, and the combined federal and state budget to subsidize them is $353 million.

“There’s a lot of money unaccounted for in this program, for making these direct cash payments to the child care centers,” Walsh said.

A proper audit for child care centers

He added that DCYF inspects Washington’s child care centers once a year, but they don’t audit them. However, he noted the word audit gets thrown around a lot.

“Well, an audit, the word itself doesn’t have a specific meaning, and some of my colleagues here are saying, ‘Well, they’re audited once a year.’ Well, that’s not an audit. That’s not a financial audit,” Walsh said.

He explained DCYF checks on the conditions of the centers, but doesn’t look at finances. The agencies that would investigate fraudulent payments are the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services and, in some cases, the Washington State Department of Commerce.

Walsh finds money isn’t adding up

“Different agencies cut the checks. DCYF inspects. None of it is a proper audit. The state auditor did look at how the payments were being handled, and as I said, her office found that there’s a bunch of money that isn’t accounted for,” Walsh said.

“So again, for emphasis, we don’t have a smoking gun that con artists running phony child care centers are cashing checks and making political donations to friendly politicians. But we have a circumstantial case that the money has been unaccounted for. Nobody’s checking that these payments are being made to currently operating child care centers,” he continued.

Walsh also shared that several documents that could help uncover potential fraud disappeared from agency websites, so he took action.

“I just filed a lawsuit a few days ago asking the courts in Thurston County to put in an injunction ordering the agencies to stop deleting the documents that are public information that they’ve had on their websites that are helping us figure this stuff out,” he said.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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