Franklin County Commissioner Erica Crawley speaks to the Ohio House of Representatives’ Committee on Children and Human Services about a bill focusing on child welfare fraud investigations and reviews. Crawley responded to comments made during a previous hearing by denying accusations that Franklin County commissioners halt child welfare fraud investigations or have any authority over them. (Screenshot courtesy of The Ohio Channel)
Child care providers and local officials discussed the challenges that will arise from two Ohio House bills focusing on how to investigate alleged child care fraud and how to police attendance at individual child care centers.
Ohio’s House Bill 647 and House Bill 649 were introduced by GOP co-sponsors in response to allegations of child care fraud in Minnesota made by a right-wing social media influencer that made national headlines and caused the Trump administration to freeze federal child care funding for that state and other Democratic-led states.
Ohio officials are sticking with their system and child care providers are doing the same, but four lawmakers have decided to introduce bills that would overhaul the authority that investigates child care fraud and propose recent methods for checking child attendance at facilities that accept state funds for publicly funded child care. HB 649 raised concerns from lawmakers and child care providers alike when it included a provision requiring photos to be taken of children entering facilities rather than the parent or guardian.
“I am completely opposed to … any changes related to facial recognition or taking photos of children,” said Karen Lampe, a child care owner and operator who also spoke on behalf of the Ohio Child Care Providers Association. “There is a privacy issue.”
At the March 24 committee hearing, an amendment was added to the bill that prohibits the storage of photos and videos taken at facilities and only allows recordings of the facility and check-ins taken from devices specifically provided by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of support in the bill for (taking photos or video of a child),” Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said during a committee hearing.
Lampe and other child care providers also told the committee that HB 647’s provisions that restrict “wiretapping” — allowing a child to be checked in retroactively to a date on which check-in was not made — could create problems and more administrative hurdles for providers. The legislation would shorten the current period in which a child’s attendance record must be amended from 30 days to seven.
“While providers fully support accountability and timely documentation, this change is not operationally feasible and would unintentionally harm families, providers, and the very system it is intended to strengthen,” Lampe said.
Childcare providers already have a system in place to remind parents to check in their children and staff to contact parents who have not yet added previous attendance records.
Even on the day of check-in, this process can be challenging, especially for guests with multiple children and properties with restricted electronic check-in desks. According to Lampe, the measures introduced in HB 647 will only exacerbate delays at the beginning of the day for parents who need to attend to other matters.
“This is the reality of drop-off and pick-up,” Lampe said. “Mom is late for work, she has three children, one child is screaming, the other is breaking down. Someone else is standing at the vending machine, so she takes the kids to class, she leaves, someone else is standing at the tap, she has to go to work, she’s gone. It’s a challenge.”
As for HB 649, after comments specifically mentioning Franklin County during a previous hearing on the bill, Franklin County Commissioner Erica Crawley came to the committee to speak.
Franklin County Attorney Shayla Favor spoke at a previous commission meeting, during which Click mentioned accusations he had heard that commissioners were holding up child welfare fraud investigations. Favor denied the allegations, saying commissioners played no role in such investigations, and Crawley continued to defend them.
“Despite the assurances provided to this committee last week, the Franklin County Board of Commissioners and its agencies play no role in investigating these facilities, nor have we interfered in any such investigations,” Crawley said.
The commissioner is also a former state legislator who stated that during her tenure as a state representative, she addressed child welfare issues and tried to improve the system statewide. At the time and since then, she said “we haven’t really moved the needle” and said the questions the legislature is asking about child care should focus on making it more affordable and accessible and supporting providers who are “the workforce behind the workforce.”
“It’s not a fraud issue, it’s not an education issue, it’s an economic infrastructure issue,” Crawley said. “We know that ultimately our economy will collapse if child care facilities continue to close.”
Child care leaders who participated in the March 24 hearing also expressed concern about possible closures in a state already struggling with child care “deserts.”
“If we continue to have more and more burdens in this system, we may have to consider some programs that don’t serve students (publicly funded child care) just because of the amount of work that will go into it.”
Most Ohioans who commented on both bills said the measures were intended to create a solution without a problem to solve.
“Ohio already has one of the strongest and most sophisticated child welfare fraud detection systems in the country,” Lampe said. “We believe that if improvements need to be made to this system… they will be improvements to this already robust system, not a nuclear bomb for low-income families and the fragile provider system that serves them.”
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