TJ Martinell - Is WA Ignoring Child Care Fraud?

Washington state is pouring hundreds of millions into child care programs but warnings about fraud are raising serious concerns. Now questions are being asked about whether the Attorney General’s office is pushing back on investigations instead of supporting them.

TJ Martinell, award-winning reporter, joins the program to break down what’s been uncovered, the scale of the problem, and whether accountability is being enforced.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to the Lars, Lars and Joe. It's a pleasure to be with you on a Monday and live on the Radio Northwest Network. Now, I understand this is going to sound terribly old-fashioned to you, but uh I'm one of those people who thinks if you had hundreds of millions of dollars missing from some state-sponsored programs, that means the hundreds of millions is taxpayer money that may now have been flushed down the drain or literally put into the hands of thieves and criminals and fraud artists, you would think that's the kind of thing that an attorney general in a state would say, we're gonna go after those dollars, we're gonna find the people who took them, they're gonna go to prison, the dollars are gonna go back to where they originally belonged. Except that right now, it sounds more to me like the attorney general of the state of Washington is running interference for child care fraud. So I thought I'd get on TJ Martinell, who's an author, writer, and award-winning reporter. Uh TJ, it's good it's good to have you back on the program. Although I understand you have another hot story. If you want to mention that, feel free.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, I just uh dropped a story about records I obtained of communication between the Attorney General's office in Washington State and state lawmakers on how the new millionaires tax isn't is intended to um overturn a Supreme Court ruling that does not allow a progressive income tax. So they're trying to overturn a centuries worth of legal precedent so that they can impose a progressive income tax on pretty much anyone they want at whatever rate.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Now here's the question. If we want to stick with that for a second, TJ, is it the job of the attorney general to say, let's see if we can create new, I guess, uh law, I guess case law is what you'd call it, because statutory law is kind of the legislature rights. Case law is when the courts make a decision. He's saying you're running up against a hundred years of c of case law, but maybe we can get it overturned, and the attorney general is going to play a role in that?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yes, they um craft, they helped craft the bill so that it would specifically force the court if there was a lawsuit that got to the Supreme Court, they would have to take up this 1933 case. And so they said, you know, make sure to call it a millionaires tax or an income tax, don't call it an excise tax, because then the Supreme Court can get avoid dealing with it. And they also wrote legal memos that I obtained. One was sent to the governor's office explaining why they believed that the 1933 decision was wrong, and here's, you know, what could happen. So it's the the attorney general's office also um the solicitor general uh was the one who advised or recommended or just pointed out, putting an emergency clause in the bill so that it would prevent a referendum this November, so voters couldn't vote on it.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

So they did it not be and because they can't exactly say we have to have an emergency clause on it because it's an emergency, because they aren't even planning to get money from this for another three years, are they? So you can't exactly say it's an emergency, so we really need the money three years from now, but it's an emergency right now, so you can't allow a vote on it because that would allow people to vote on it. So they just want to find an excuse for why they should lock the public out of voting on it.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I mean, that's that that raises the question because if there's an initiative that voters uh end up, there's enough signatures for an initiative and it is upheld and then challenged, the attorney general's office is going to be the one that's gonna be defending an initiative that's going against a law that they help craft. So it's it's for for for you know for some people that this all might be a little confusing, but it just raises the question of whether or not the attorney general's office should be advising legislators on how to get Supreme Court rulings overturned. And also the purpose of the bill should be to raise revenue, but instead its primary purpose, according to these emails, is to get around a 1933 Supreme Court decision that if they want to do a progressive income tax, they're gonna have to go to voters and they're gonna have to get a constitutional amendment uh put into our state constitution that allows it, because we passed an amendment back in the 30s that said that all property has to be taxed at the same rate based on its class. And income is considered to fall within the definition of property in our state, and it's defined as all things tangible and intangible subject to ownership. What they're trying to make the case is that your income is not your property under the Washington State Constitution, so it it doesn't this doesn't apply to that. That's what they're gonna try to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

So in other words, when my boss writes a check to me for my every you know twice a month paycheck, it's not actually my property when I get that money. It doesn't belong to me.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

That is what they're that is what they're trying to make the legal case for in these memos. And they know that other states don't treat income as property, but the problem is that our state constitution has one of the broadest definitions of property you could possibly imagine. And that was noted in the 1933 decision that there's no way that income does not fall under this definition. And every single Supreme Court in our state since 1933 has said the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

So that's where we are. Hey, before we run out of time, I'm talking to TJ Martinell from the Center Square. Tell my audience what uh the attorney general is also doing to try to shield the fraud, the folks who are committing fraud. Why in the world is he doing that?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Well, what's so what's interesting is I I got a record back. It was this email that was sent by a former federal regional uh manager for the Office of Childcare, and he was writing to somebody in our state attorney general's office last December when the Somolean daycare fraud allegations were arising. And he openly says in the email that fraud in programs like childcare is common. Like this is a common thing that goes on. And so that's the interesting thing is he's openly saying that fraud is common, and so it raises questions as to how the attorney general's office reacted to this message.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yeah, because you'd think if it's common and you're taking the taxpayers' money and you're doing two kinds of harm. You're taking money the taxpayers gave up, which was allocated to a problem, and it's not going to the problem, it's going to the fraud artist. And every time a dollar goes to the fraud artist instead of the cause that lawmakers put it to, then that's cheating the people who are intended to be the beneficiaries of this. They're losing out, so the fraud, the uh fraud artist can win. And and now the attorney general's office is saying, yeah, we don't we don't care that this is common. We're not going to go after it?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Well, that's the question uh that we're gonna be finding out. The Attorney General's office, to be fair, can't invest, doesn't investigate child care fraud. But this email came out the day after Nick Brown put out a statement um criticizing independent journalists who were going to these alleged daycare centers and finding no kids, and and some of them didn't even look like anybody. I I, you know, it just looked suspicious, and the reaction was, you know, don't go to these places. And but the other thing is that state lawmakers and a lot of other state officials sought to basically say that there's no fraud going on and that DCYF had safeguards in place to prevent this. You have a former federal official of the Office of Childcare saying it is common. And in fact, he said it's not it's not just Somalian daycare centers, it's just it's everybody. So implying that the problem is much bigger than than even just this. And you know what, T is remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

I would think that Nick Brown would be sending a thank you note saying if you've found what appears to be a fraudulent daycare, we'll take that tip, we'll investigate it, and if it turns out to be fraud, we'll claw the money back if we can, but we'll shut down the payments for starters, and we'll do that. Thank you very much for funding it. Instead, Nick Brown basically suggests to people hey, if you're out there looking for fraud in Somali daycares or any kind of daycares, we're gonna consider you uh engaging in some kind of hate crime, and we might actually prosecute the folks who are blowing the whistle. That is TJ Martinell from the Center Square. He's a great award-winning reporter from the Seattle area. Back in a moment, you're listening to the Lars Larson Show and the Radio Northwest Network.