State Finds Fund Misuse at 19 Child Care Centers
The state comptroller,
Thomas P. DiNapoli, said on Wednesday that his office had uncovered numerous instances of child care centers in New York City misspending public funds. He said his office had referred 19 child care centers to local prosecutors for possible criminal investigation.
At a news conference in Manhattan, Mr. DiNapoli announced the results of an audit of contractors hired by the State Office of Children and Family Services to care for low-income children.
One part of the study examined a sample of 34 contracts whose contractors were supposed to create 1,545 slots for child care, but as of May 2007 they had created only 821.
Another part of the audit focused on 55 contracts that cost the state $2.9 million and found that misspending in 39 totaled nearly $1.6 million.
"A lack of effective monitoring contributed to ineffective results and misuse of funds," the audit found, noting that the comptroller's office had made similar findings in previous examinations of the state office.
The money for the programs came from the federal Child Care and Development Fund, which provides New York State with more than $300 million a year to arrange child care for low-income families.
In all, the audit covered 205 contracts, totaling $10.7 million, that were awarded from 1999 to 2006 to New York City child care providers.
Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services since January 2007, joined Mr. DiNapoli at the news conference. "These recommendations will go a long way toward assuring that past abuses are not repeated under my watch," she said.
Ms. Carrión said her office had begun to make changes. Among other things, she said, it has created a child care services division, lowered manager workloads to allow for better monitoring, and trained employees to detect fraud.
Andrea Anthony, executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, which represents about 250 organizations that run some 340 child care programs across the city, said she was troubled by the findings.
"I was shocked," she said in a phone interview after the news conference, which she attended. "It's just shameful that you see a few centers that see an opportunity to be dishonest, and take it. These are bad apples, and I'm glad DiNapoli is going after the bad apples, so that all of us aren't viewed as trying to take taxpayer dollars and misuse them."
The 25-page audit, which included a formal response from Ms. Carrión's office, contained several examples of what Mr. DiNapoli called exploitation of public money.
One contractor admitted that she had obtained blank invoices from suppliers and filled them in with falsified charges, and created fictitious canceled checks to obtain about $40,000 in reimbursements. Some of the money, the contractor acknowledged, went for personal expenses like a cellphone, credit-card bills and airline tickets.
Another contractor received $95,000 to create 30 slots for child care. The slots were never created; instead, some of the money was deposited in a personal checking account.
Although Mr. DiNapoli's office identified the 19 child care centers referred to prosecutors, it declined to say what improprieties it believed they committed.
Of the 19 centers, 12 were in Brooklyn, 5 in Queens, and 1 each in the Bronx and Manhattan.
Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for
Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said, "We have received the comptroller's audit and we are reviewing it."
Telephone calls to several of the centers in Brooklyn that were referred to Mr. Hynes's office suggested that they were out of business or had had their phones disconnected.
A person who answered the phone at one of the centers, Marie Carmen Daycare Center at 911 Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, hung up upon learning that the call was from a reporter.
At Footsteps Childcare, at 1125 Broadway in Bushwick, a manager, Monica McDonald, said she had not heard about the audit and could not immediately comment.
At a number listed for another center, Educators for Children, Youth and Families, a woman who answered the phone said the number now belonged to Public School 323. "People call all the time and say their checks bounced," the woman said. "I tell them they are not here anymore and I have no more information."
Ms. Anthony, of the Day Care Council, said 2 of the 19 centers referred to prosecutors were members of her association: Flatbush Haitian Center and Zion Day Care Center, both in Brooklyn. She said she did not know details of how they were managed.
Vaughan P. A. Toney, the president of a nonprofit group, Friends of Crown Heights, said it took over Flatbush Haitian's day care programs on May 26 at the request of the city's
Administration for Children's Services.
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