Children in kindergarten. (Getty Images)
One of two bills addressing potential fraud in Ohio’s child welfare system has advanced from an Ohio House committee, including notification requirements, to legislative leadership.
Ohio House Bill 649 attended several hearings of the House Children and Human Services Committee, and consideration continued Tuesday when the committee approved changes proposed by the bill’s Republican sponsors.
The measure, sponsored by state Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp. and D. J. Swearingen, R-Huron, addresses several issues related to child welfare fraud investigations, including attendance checks for individual children and the authorities and process by which potential fraud is investigated.
As introduced, HB 649 would require the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services to conduct a “initial investigation” immediately following an allegation of “probable or suspected waste, fraud and abuse” at a publicly funded child care center under a publicly funded child care program.
If the preliminary investigation finds substantiated allegations, the bill would require the State Office of Inspector General to conduct an investigation. Under a change introduced at Tuesday’s committee hearing, the inspector general will be able to request additional evidence from the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services at any stage of an investigation “and to pause the investigation until the evidence becomes available,” according to the recent version of the bill.
The previous version of HB 649 required that the Ohio House Speaker and the president of the state Senate be notified when a child care fraud case is referred to the inspector general and when an investigation is completed.
The Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate will be notified about the latest version of the bill, but only at the beginning of a full investigation.
No objections were raised to the changes to the bill introduced on Tuesday.
HB 649 previously included a provision that was controversial to some, especially child care workers and owners. Williams proposed that, instead of the current system in which a parent or guardian bringing a child is verified against the system’s database and photographed to confirm the presence of a specific child, cameras monitoring the facility could be used to identify children attending child care centers. The proposal would also require child care centers to retain at least 60 days of security camera footage for “compliance review.”
During a March hearing, the committee amended HB 649 to prohibit the storage of photos and videos recorded at facilities. The bill change would only allow recordings recorded using devices provided by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services.
State Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said during the meeting that “there’s not a lot of support for (capturing children’s photos or videos) in the bill.”
The bill is being considered in committee at the same time that a separate GOP-led bill to identify and investigate child welfare fraud is being considered for legislative approval. Ohio House Bill 647 was also amended during a recent hearing, moving some of the funding included in the bill back into the budget of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth. This bill has the support of the agency’s director, Kara Wente, who spoke about it at an earlier stage of consideration.
Wente said that while the department already has a diligent system in place for identifying suspected fraud, HB 647 strengthens those efforts. Child welfare fraud is not a statistically common problem in Ohio. Wente and his department cited fewer than 200 reported cases last year and only 24 that resulted in the loss of publicly funded child care program funds for facilities under investigation.
Child care providers have been in the spotlight since the Trump administration froze funding for some states, including Minnesotaafter a right-wing influencer made allegations that local facilities, especially those run by Somali immigrants, had committed fraud by using federal funds intended for child care.
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