After Washington State Democrats agreed to fraud prevention measures for the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), after audits continue to reveal major gaps in oversight of the state’s child care subsidy system, they now appear to have stripped the provisions from the legislation after getting Republicans to support the bill.
On Tuesday evening, Rep. Travis Couture (R–Allyn) posted on X that fraud-prevention measures he and Rep. Joshua Penner (R–Orting) had negotiated into House Bill 2253 were being removed by a Senate amendment sponsored by Sen. Claire Wilson (D–Auburn).
“Rep. Penner and myself had negotiated some fraud prevention measures into a bill about child care licensing… The bill passed. And now I learned today that Democrat Sen. Claire Wilson has an amendment to literally strip out every single bit of it,” Couture wrote. “Aside from how professionally bad that is, why would Democrats seek to erase fraud prevention?”
According to the Senate committee amendment (S-5467.2), the changes would strike several provisions added to strengthen oversight, including requiring subsidy-accepting child care providers to use an electronic attendance system capturing daily check-in and check-out times verified by a parent or guardian’s electronic signature or biometric identifier. The bill also removed language requiring license revocation if a provider exceeds licensed capacity.
Additionally, the revisions strike permanent disqualification provisions for providers found to have committed child care subsidy fraud and remove immediate termination language tied to high-potency synthetic opioids or illicit substances in a child care home.
The amendment retains the underlying bill but removes the enforcement and fraud-prevention mechanisms Republicans described as a “financial firewall.”
The legislative clash comes amid mounting scrutiny of DCYF. As previously reported, the Washington State Auditor’s Office said it was “impossible” to trace payments to individual providers for four consecutive years because DCYF failed to maintain required provider-level records. In its most recent audit, the office formally questioned $416 million in federal program costs due to inadequate documentation.
DCYF has also acknowledged 1,372 overpayments totaling roughly $2 million in a recent fiscal year, largely tied to missing attendance records and overbilled hours.
Despite these findings, Attorney General Nick Brown recently characterized fraud allegations as largely “baseless,” emphasizing the difference between internal control issues and criminal wrongdoing. Meanwhile, DCYF’s Oversight Board has expressed confidence in existing safeguards.
