Minnesota lawmakers ask tough questions about state oversight of Child Care Assistance Program

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Minnesota lawmakers ask tough questions about state oversight of Child Care Assistance Program

Minnesota lawmakers ask tough questions about state oversight of Child Care Assistance Program

The Minnesota Senate Human Services Committee asked Tikki Brown, commissioner of the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), some tough questions about a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS story concerning oversight of child day care centers in the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP).

Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen, (R-Glencoe), opened the hearing Thursday morning.

“I think you’re probably aware of the channel 5 investigation that’s just showing a lot of problems and fraud,” said Gruenhagen. “It’s interesting to me that a news reporter can come up with a lot of this information and yet afterwards, I’m not sure what the state agencies are doing to prevent this?”

RELATED: Minnesota lawmakers call for hearing, investigation into Child Care Assistance Program

Commissioner Brown said she was committed to looking into the issues raised by the KSTP story and also said her department is putting in new measures to combat fraud, waste and abuse with things like a new electronic attendance record keeping system statewide, which includes CCAP.

“As a tool to improve integrity and one of the reasons for that is that paper records are obviously easy to falsify and can lack some credibility,” said Brown.

KSTP has reached out to Gov. Tim Walz and House DFL leadership for comment, but they have not yet responded.