(File photo: Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).
Lawmakers sponsoring two different Ohio bills designed to address allegations of child welfare fraud paint drastically different pictures of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services’ cooperation in the process.
The bills were a response to the Trump administration’s threats to freeze funds in states amid right-wing social media claims of fraud, particularly at facilities run by members of Minnesota’s Somali community.
“Ohio is not the second state to have this problem,” said state Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp., co-sponsor of Ohio House Bill 647. “And that’s not even close.”
News of fraud allegations in Minnesota prompted the Trump administration to make the decision try to freeze millions in funding child care for the state and other Democratic-led states, an action that was temporarily blocked by a judge during the lawsuit.
The controversy in Minnesota has prompted leaders in many states, including Ohio, to defend their own child welfare systems.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine joined Child and Youth Services Director Kara Wente at a news conference to say he trusted the state’s system and, they urged, remained vigilant against fraud.
Report published this month from the department kept statistics that DeWine and Wente provided in defending the system.
The report shows that in 2025, the department received 124 referrals. Only 24 resulted in the termination of contracts with providers, meaning the facilities could remain open but would not be funded by the state under a publicly funded child care program.
In total, overpayments amounting to USD 2.5 million were found.
The ODCY report concluded that an investigation into the remaining 100 reports found no intent to commit fraud.
Of the remaining referrals, 70 resulted in “corrective action,” which may include technical assistance or an overpayment determination.
The report said the remaining 30 reports were “resolved with no further action required.”
So far in 2026, the department has already received around 100 referrals, although this number does not represent the initiation of investigations, and the report indicated that some referrals may overlap.
Co-sponsors HB 647 and another bill introduced this week to the House Children and Human Services Committee said their bills would address fraud concerns in Ohio, despite the general belief that the state was monitoring the issue.
HB 647, sponsored by Young and state Rep. Phil Plummer, R-Dayton, would require payments for publicly funded child care to be based on actual attendance rather than enrollment.
The state currently pays based on attendance, but the Biden administration has attempted to transition to an enrollment-based payment system.
The Trump administration has extended the transition period from attendance to enrollment, effectively pausing the changes for now.
The bill also authorizes the Office of the Attorney General to prosecute fraud cases referred to it.
It would bypass district attorneys’ offices, which Young said was a “really important step” because going through district attorneys’ offices “sometimes slows down the process.”
Plummer went further, saying that of the 13 child welfare fraud cases referred to anonymous district attorneys, 12 of them did not go to trial.
“The system worked, cases were taken to court, prosecutors turned a blind eye to it,” Plummer said.
At a press conference announcing the bill earlier this year, Plummer and Young sided with Wente, praising the department’s cooperation with sponsors in crafting the bill’s language.
They continued to defend the department during the committee hearing.
“Honestly … they know what they’re doing, they realize they have to step forward and make some changes,” Young said.
Plummer said he doesn’t think fraud “is as common as we’ve been told,” but the department and the state’s child welfare industry could certainly be helped by better technology to verify identities at facilities.
Young and Plummer’s bill also seeks to improve “data analytics” to track and monitor facility activity regarding state funding.
Ohio House Bill 649
The committee had heard about another child welfare fraud protection bill, but the bill’s co-sponsor wanted more done to investigate fraud outside the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services, in part because he believes the agency isn’t doing enough.
State Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., has already questioned the department’s oversight capabilities, leading the charge based on a letter signed by 41 other House members calling for increased unannounced inspections of publicly funded child care centers, “with particular emphasis on the Columbus area,” where he said reports were “surfacing.”
“When we look at it, we try to determine how widespread this problem is, and I can tell you that DCY is not doing a good job of investigating it,” Williams said.
Although at one point Williams stated that he was “not here to allege that there is widespread fraud in Ohio” and that the department had done a “decent job,” at another point he said that facilities’ ability to “backdate” attendance, whether for innocent reasons or otherwise, creates a system “set up so that fraud can be widespread and widespread.”
The lawmaker alleged that in an attempt to obtain information from the department on 124 referrals, the department “refused” to provide him with most of the information he requested, saying some investigations were still ongoing and other information was not a public record.
“DCY has made it very difficult for us to determine whether fraud actually occurred,” Williams told the committee.
In a statement to the Capital Journal, a department spokesman said it was unable to release the information because it could “reveal the results of the investigative work, the program’s integrity review methods, or the identity of the complainant.”
“Additionally, the department’s disclosure of information about programs for which a referral did not result in reasonable findings may unfairly affect the provider’s business or reputation without cause and may result in civil liability or interference with contracts,” the department said.
Williams told fellow lawmakers that as a legislature “we should be seriously concerned that an executive agency is denying us information necessary to do our jobs and conduct our oversight.”
Ohio House Bill 649which Williams co-sponsored with fellow Republican state Rep. DJ Swearingen, R-Huron, would require child care centers to employ existing security cameras or install security cameras at entrances, exits and “generally non-private” areas, where the systems would store at least 60 days of footage and submit it to ODCY “for compliance purposes.”
Williams said using surveillance footage would verify that the minor being turned away was actually present and not just an adult.
The bill would also require the department to immediately suspend funding and “initiate a preliminary investigation” if it “detects probable waste, fraud, or abuse.”
The case will then be forwarded to the Ohio State Auditor’s Office and then, if prosecution is necessary, to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Swearingen and Williams said constituencies in their districts have requested a bill like the one they introduced, although Swearingen told the committee it was still a “compromise bill.”
“A lot of people said, ‘just turn it off and let the vendors come in one by one and ask for a refund and check them out,’” he said.
Democrats on the committee tried to push back on comments by Williams and Swearingen that there was fraud, even though the Department of Children and Youth Services had not concluded there was fraud.
“I want to make sure that when we talk about these issues, we don’t assume negative intent without being able to prove that the intent to defraud was present,” said state Rep. Crystal Lett, D-Columbia.
Swearingen persisted, saying that the purpose of HB 649 “is to confirm what we reasonably believe to be true, and I would not personally advocate abandoning fraud.”
Other committee members on both sides of the aisle expressed concern about the focus on the children’s portion of the photo ID bill.
Lawmakers worried about the possibility of the photos being leaked, even though Williams and Swearingen tried to allay concerns by saying the photos would be stored securely and not available to the public.
“I’m glad there haven’t been any leaks so far, but having a database of images of minors is really concerning to me personally,” said state Rep. Ashley Bryant Bailey, D-Cincinnati.
“We live in the era of the Epstein files, so anything can happen.”
Although the co-sponsors said they were open to discussion and actively working on a replacement bill based on feedback from child care providers, Williams continued to press for a response from the Department of Children and Youth Services, even mentioning the Legislature’s rarely used subpoena power.
“Either the executive will comply and allow us to provide oversight, or we may have to take a strong approach that we want to see whether this was an administrative issue… or whether it was an individual who could not provide attendance records for children who were being paid for, which could indicate fraud.”
The committee’s chairman, state Rep. Andrea White, R-Kettering, said the committee will hear from Director DCY Wente at a hearing next week, which the department confirmed in its statement to the Capital Journal.
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