Daycare Fraud? Not in Ohio

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley grabbed national headlines with a video claiming rampant childcare fraud in Minneapolis, which led to potential impacts for childcare across the country.

While no independent investigations could verify Shirley’s claims, and the Minnesota Office of Inspector General carried out on-site compliance checks at nine of the centers and confirmed they were “operating as expected,” the federal government has frozen federal child care funding. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine discusses the impact that the freeze could have on the Buckeye State.

“We provide for about 100,000 children every year, additional help so that child can go to a day care center and those parents can work. And, the child can be in a safe place and a good place where that child will learn,” DeWine said. “So, we subsidize about 100,000 kids. These are in about 5,200 locations around the state, day care centers around the state of Ohio. ”

Amid the funding freeze, the Department of Health and Human Services released new rules on how funding and childcare services are accounted for. DeWine says Ohio has been operating under those rules before the situation came about.

“But, we’ve notified them that the qualifications they have put out and the concerns that they have raised, that we’re meeting that challenge in the state of Ohio already,” DeWine said. “For example, one of the things that we’re doing, we’re counting only the number of people who attend, only the number of children who attend. Not the number of people who are enrolled, because you can be enrolled and then not show up. So we’re only paying for actual use of that daycare center.”

According to DeWine, there is about 8 weeks of cash flow to continue subsidizing childcare services and the governor doesn’t believe that the federal government will take that long to decide on the funding freeze.