Here’s where things stand around child care fund audits in WA

This article originally appeared in the 1/20/26 edition of the Seattle Times and reflects the viewpoint of State Auditor Pat McCarthy.

Let’s start with facts. The Washington State Auditor audits federal child care funding in our state every year. In the past four years, we have not been able to audit it because of the state’s lack of record keeping.

It’s also a fact that until recently, this work has not received much public attention. Some of the reasons for the recent spike in interest from the news media and members of the public are distasteful, but more accountability for day care spending in Washington is needed.

Let me explain. 

We’re talking about this now because audits in the state of Minnesota did what audits are designed to do: They flagged gaps in oversight of public programs, and appropriate investigators stepped in.  

Audits are accountability tools; criminal charges are in the realm of law enforcement. Just last month, the U.S. attorney’s office said that billions of dollars meant for a variety of public services in Minnesota may have been stolen through fraud schemes.  

These charges are the result of work that has gone on for years. Unfortunately, the facts and need for accountability — in Minnesota and now in Washington — have been hijacked by issues of race that have no place in the discussion. 

As Washingtonians, we know accountability and prejudice are wholly incompatible.  

As the state auditor, I can tell you that my team of nearly 500 works to provide independent and fact-driven accountability across the state, every week of every month, producing 3,000 audits a year. The Office of the Washington State Auditor has audited governments since our state’s founding in 1889. 

Today, our audit work includes auditing the federal program that subsidizes child care in our state, the Child Care and Development Fund. 

As our public reports showed, we had not been able to fully audit the program for the previous four years. Because the Department of Children, Youth and Families did not track its spending with a level of traceability that complied with federal requirements, we were unable to determine whether that money was spent according to federal rules.  

As a result, we questioned the entire program’s spending for fiscal years 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. In our most recent State of Washington Single Audit, that meant questioning $416 million spent through the federal child care program.  

We question costs when an agency does not have adequate documentation to support its expenditures, or it has not complied with grant requirements. Doing so does not necessarily indicate fraud.  

We’ve produced a summary of the single audit, or you can look up the finding, 2024-056, in the full report (PDF). You can find these reports and all other audits we publish on our website. I encourage everyone to read them for yourselves — we have a wealth of public information at sao.wa.gov, available to everyone.  

However, when we are unable to audit a public entity’s accounts, whether it is the smallest irrigation/drainage district or the largest state program, we cannot deliver the accountability the public expects. We cannot advance our vision of increasing public trust in government. 

In light of that, I have good news for accountability regarding federal child care subsidies.

Shortly after taking office, Gov. Bob Ferguson and DCYF Secretary Tana Senn ensured an increase in accountability for the department’s spending. It is a fact that, for the first time in five years, we can conduct a full audit of the Child Care and Development Fund. 

Because of that, this month we could — and did — assure Washingtonians that a full, independent audit of child care subsidies is underway. 

We expect to publish that work in about three months. We may determine there are issues still to be addressed in the state’s oversight of child care funding. Again, that does not necessarily mean the state has been defrauded. We will wait for the facts.

By submitting vital public services to the scrutiny of independent audits, we build trust between the public and their government.  

That trust is critical to the democratic ideals we share as Americans of every background. And that trust must always be based on the rock-solid foundation of fact.