Frederica Freyberg:
We turn now to an update on fraud investigation involving the Wisconsin Shares program. That's the $350 million state program that pays child care subsidies for low-income families. The state Department of Children and Families launched an anti-fraud unit this fall and has suspended more than 130 providers suspected of ripping off the state. This week the secretary, Reggie Bicha, detailed increased criminal background checks for care givers and what that means for the children of Wisconsin.

Reggie Bicha:
What we uncovered was that, again, while the vast majority of child care in the state of Wisconsin is safe, we found too many situations where care was being provided where it should not have been. Couple of examples. We found convicted criminals providing care or living in homes where child care was being provided. We uncovered situations where individuals were found to have abused children, were also providing child care. And we found that licensing visits were not always completed on time by our licensing staff. What we did to uncover this was we compared all our license and certified child care providers against multiple state databases, the circuit court, CCAP, we call it, the Department of Justice database and the sex offender registry. We compared those lists to find providers or others that may live in child care settings who have a criminal or unsafe background. This includes registered sex offenders, those with substantiated findings of child abuse and neglect as well as offenses that were only recently barred by the legislature such as drug dealing and offenses relating to the operation of a business. In the months of July through October we conducted 22,000 background checks. We found matches in too many circumstances. These matches were immediately followed up by our licensing and county staff across the state and has resulted in 28 revocations of licensures for certifications. Earlier this year, the legislative audit bureau announced matches that they had uncovered in the sex offender registry along with child care providers. We have continued to do matches against the sex offender registry on a monthly basis. It's a new way of doing business in the Department of Children and Families. We've been doing that each month since September and I'm pleased to report thus far we have not found any situation where a sex offender is actively residing in a child care program. So by doing these monthly checks now, we're doing it on a much more regular basis and are much more likely to uncover real-time situations. We think we're better positioned to make sure children are safe in child care. We have been extremely diligent at the Department of Children and Families to make sure that child care is safe and healthy for children in our state. And when we uncover situations that put children at risk, we have been acting very aggressively to hold those providers accountable. When you compare the rate of revocations that the Department of Children and Families has made in the prior year, we have nearly doubled the pace of revocations of licensed facilities from the previous several years. We are not excited to put small child care providers out of business. That is not my goal. My goal, however, is to keep children safe and my goal is to restore integrity in the Wisconsin Shares program. And if there are child care providers that are providing unsafe care or child care providers who are ripping off taxpayers, the state of Wisconsin does not want to do business with those providers.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, last week Milwaukee County criminally charged with providers, including one alleged to have defrauded the state of nearly $1 million during a three-year period. Bicha says oversight has resulted in a savings of over $4 million in the month of November compared to the same month last year.