One of two bills targeting potential fraud in Ohio’s childcare system saw changes in an Ohio House committee, including to notification requirements going all the way up to legislative leadership.
Ohio House Bill 649 has seen several hearings in the House Children and Human Services Committee, and the consideration continued on Tuesday, when the committee approved changes offered by the Republican sponsors of the bill.
The measure, sponsored by state Reps. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., and D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, touches on several issues related to childcare fraud investigations, including verifying the attendance of individual children, and the authority and process through which potential fraud is investigated.
As introduced, H.B. 649 would require the Ohio Department of Children & Youth to conduct a “preliminary investigation” immediately after an allegation of “probable or suspected waste, fraud, and abuse” is levied at a childcare center that receives funding through the Publicly Funded Child Care program.
If a preliminary investigation finds substantiated allegations, the state’s Office of the Inspector General will be required to conduct an investigation, under the bill. In a change made in Tuesday’s committee hearing, the inspector general would be allowed to request additional evidence from the Ohio Department of Children & Youth at any point in that investigation, “and to pause the investigation until that evidence is made available,” according to the new version of the bill.
A previous version of H.B. 649 required that the Ohio House speaker and the state Senate president be notified when a childcare fraud case was referred to the inspector general, and at the conclusion of the investigation.
In the newest version of the bill, the House speaker and Senate president will be notified, but only at the beginning of a full investigation.
There were no objections to the changes made to the bill on Tuesday.
H.B. 649 previously had a provision in it that proved controversial to some, particularly childcare workers and owners. Williams had proposed that facility surveillance cameras be used to identify children attending the childcare centers, rather than the current system where a parent or guardian who drops off the child is verified within the system database, and photographed to confirm the individual child’s attendance. The proposal also would have required child care centers to retain at least 60 days of security camera footage for department “compliance reviews.”
In a March hearing, the committee amended H.B. 649, prohibiting the storage of photos or videos taken at facilities. The change to the bill would only allow footage taken from devices specifically provided by the Ohio Department of Children & Youth.
State Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said during the meeting that there was “not a broad amount of support for (child photo or video capture) staying in the bill.”
The bill is being considered in the committee at the same time a separate GOP-led bill related to childcare fraud identification and investigation is also being looked at for legislative approval. Ohio House Bill 647 also saw changes at a recent recent hearing, moving some funding that had been included in the bill back to the budget of the Ohio Department of Children & Youth. That bill has the support of the agency’s director, Kara Wente, who spoke in support of it earlier in the consideration process.
Wente said while the department already has a diligent system in place to identify suspected fraud, H.B. 647 bolsters those efforts. Childcare fraud is not a statistically prevalent issue in Ohio. Wente and the department cited less than 200 reported cases last year, and only 24 that led to the loss of Publicly Funded Child Care program funding for investigated facilities.
Childcare facilities have been in the spotlight since the Trump administration froze funding to some states including Minnesota, after allegations were made by a right-wing influencer that facilities there, particularly those managed by Somali immigrants, were committing fraud using federal funds provided for childcare purposes.