According tothe Milwaukee-based United Alliance of Day Care Providers (UADCP), that answeris yes.
“Unfortunatelyhundreds of parents and their children have been affected negatively by theserash decisions to have emergency meetings, changing policy and laws withoutadvance notice to providers and parents,” the group stated in an Oct. 20 letterto elected officials.
In recentmonths, the state Legislature has enacted sweeping changes in the $385 millionWisconsin Shares program. That program subsidizes day care payments forfamilies in Wisconsin Works (W-2), which was launched during Republican Gov.Tommy Thompson’s tenure in the 1990s. Without that subsidy, struggling parentscould not afford to pay for child care while they’re at work or going toschool. Many day care centers opened as a result, especially in under-served areasin Milwaukee,and the program grew by leaps and bounds.
Like Milwaukee’s voucherschool program, which was also launched during the Thompson era, scant qualitycontrol or administrative oversight was built into the taxpayer-fundedWisconsin Shares from the beginning.
As a result,the state Legislative Audit Bureau estimated that up to $22 million wasimproperly paid to day care providers in 2008. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel launched an investigation into what itcalled fraud, and the state Legislature responded by granting the Department ofChildren and Families (DCF) enhanced powers to cut off payments to day careproviders it believes received overpayments or committed fraud. In just a fewweeks, more than 100 day care providers were kicked out of the program, becauseDCF “reasonably suspects program violations.”
But day careproviders contend that the state has unfairly targeted day care centers in thecity and have been suspending centers based on suspicion of fraud, not proof.
“UADCPmembers have been loyal partners with Milwaukee County, [the] state ofWisconsin, and the greater Milwaukee community upon conception of W-2,” theletter states. “We believe it is shameful the way the state and county havebeen treating these providers whose participation was critical to the successof the W-2 program.”
But DCFspokeswoman Stephanie Hayden said the department is only going after providerswho it suspects have committed more than $10,000 worth of fraud.
“We’remaking sure that taxpayer dollars are being used for hard-working, low-incomepeople so they can have access to the Shares program,” Hayden said.
GuiltyUntil Proven Innocent?
State Rep. Tamara Grigsby, who has been an advocatefor the child care providers in the Wisconsin Shares program, agrees that thestate should identify and punish those who are intentionally defrauding thesystem.
But Grigsby also wants DCF to identify clericalerrors made by day care providers and help bring those providers back intocompliance. In fact, Grigsby inserted language into this summer’s legislationthat would have allowed the state to go after providers that were suspected ofcommitting “egregious or intentional fraud.” But the governor stripped out theterm “intentional,” allowing DCF to go after what it suspects is egregiousfraud.
“They now have free rein to just go after anyone whomay have made a mistake,” Grigsby said.
But many daycare providers feel that they’ve been unfairly targeted and forced to shut downbased on suspicion of fraud when, more accurately, they’ve simply made clericalerrors or have sloppy record keeping.
Attorney N.Lynette McNeely, legal redress chair for the Waukesha County Branch of theNAACP and an advocate for the day care providers, argues that the real problemwith the program lies in inconsistent state and county administration andoversight, not with the day care providers themselves. She said many day careproviders don’t realize they’re not in compliance until they’re suspended bythe state, and they’re given no ability to correct their violations beforesuspension. Nor did the state or county give them much guidance on bestbusiness practices or compliance after they were admitted to the program.
“They’resuspending first, then asking questions later,” McNeely said.
Since the mass suspensions, six day care providers,four of them in Milwaukee County, have beenreinstated after investigators found no fraud.
Barbara’sStory: Sabotage?
Take“Barbara,” for example, who asked that the Shepherdnot print her real name because she is appealing her suspension and fearsretaliation by the state.
Barbara hadoperated two day care centers in Milwaukeefor more than a decade. On Sept. 18, when Barbara was traveling between herfacilities, investigators stopped by one of her centers. The manager did notlet them in. The investigatorswho, the manager told Barbara, did not showidentificationasked for the center’s attendance records. The manager did notwant to turn over the records to strangers, so she told them the records werelocked up.
Theinvestigators reported that there were no children on site, yet Barbara and hermanager say there were. DCF also reported that the center had attendance recordviolations twice before, in April 2009 and May 2008, and that licensers couldnot access the center on three other occasions. Barbara contends that thelicensers did not come to her facility on those dates.
Barbara’spayments were cut off the day the investigators showed up at her day carecenter, but she didn’t find out until she saw her name in the paper on Sept.23. The letter from the state informing her of her suspension arrived the nextday.
Barbara said she called DCF to plead her case.
“I told them the [investigators] never set foot inmy place and if they had they would have seen kids running toward the door,”Barbara said. “How did they go back and say there were no kids in attendancewhen they were there? They were told that my attendance records were lockedaway and they’d have to wait for me to get back. I was only five minutes away.They could have waited. It seemed more like they were sabotaging day cares andnot trying to get the real information.”
Barbara is now appealing her case, but the system isoverwhelmed. Her Nov. 9 phone hearing with an administrative law judge went nowherebecause the attorney representing DCF didn’t have her paperwork in order.
“This is the only thing that providers are left todo,” Barbara said. “You put in paperwork and you sit back and wait and wait.Then you have a 10-minute phone conversation and you wait and wait again.”
Barbara was told that the appeals process could takeup to eight months. In the meantime, one of her day care centers has shut downand her employees are out of work.
She had another meeting with the state’s attorneythis week, and was unable to come to a resolution.
“They’re not trying to settle anything,” Barbarasaid.
A clarification regarding which providers DCF is targeting: DCF is targeting anyone who is committing fraud in any amount. One indicator is whether a provider is receiving more than $11,000 per "slot"not, as I stated, providers who DCF suspects has committed more than $10,000 worth of fraud. Sorry for the confusion.--LK
