It appears unlikely that we’ve seen the last of problems associated with Wisconsin Shares. During a legislative hearing Wednesday, on a bill to prohibit persons with criminal records from being licensed as child care providers, Joint Audit Committee co-chair, Representative Peter Barca said more will be revealed about the problem plagued program. “The final audit on this program will come out later in the year, most likely in December,” said Barca. “That will bring new findings to light, and I expect probably new legislation and new regulations.”

Investigative reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel uncovered providers falsifying records to obtain additional payments from the state, in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, the audit identified about $20-million in fraudulent claims that had been made in 2008. Auditors also found that addresses given by four registered sex offenders match the addresses of four licensed and certified child care providers in southeast Wisconsin. Reggie Bicha, the secretary of the year and-half-old Department of Children and Family Services, told members of the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee recently that his agency was formed in part to combat the sorts of abuses uncovered in the audit and by media reports. During an on-air interview last month, Bicha told Racine radio station WRJN that there was an “assumption that child care providers were going to be good business owners and do the right things,” when Wisconsin Shares was created in 1996. “The necessary controls that should have been in this program were never developed from the beginning,” Bicha said. [Read more...]