Oklahoma lawmaker responds to State Auditor's report

Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd has released the annual federal single audit report. Her office found $93.4 million of questioned costs in FY 2023.

The Senate Health and Human Services Chairman, Paul Rosino, began looking into possible mismanagement within DHS and has worked to implement multiple solutions on the legislative level.

"It was very concerning to us what was happening," said Sen. Rosino. "We have known about these problems for years."

The current director of DHS, Jeffrey Cartmell, was appointed in late 2024, more than a year after the end of the fiscal year the audit was looked at.

“When director Cartmell first became director, I had told him he should probably ask for an audit so that everything that happened in the past is not blamed on him,” said Senate Health and Human Services Chairman Paul Rosino.

The main issue at hand is how Oklahoma Human Services spent the Federal Child Care Development Grant, which is federal COVID-relief money. Byrd said Oklahoma Human Services never implemented strong guidelines on how daycares could use the funds, nor did it conduct necessary financial monitoring.

“You'll notice that the largest amount of questioned costs pertains to the Department of Human Services. One of the primary purposes of the grant was to help childcare facilities cover normal operating expenses like payroll and rent during the pandemic,” said Byrd.

“The senate in particular has worked hard to fix some of these problems,” said Sen. Rosino.

Rosino says he began flagging these concerns about questionable costs early on during senate hearings, and was worried DHS was improperly spending the federal pandemic dollars.

“I have been saying for a long time, especially in childcare, that we are going to fall off a cliff, we cannot afford to continue paying what we're paying. Mainly, COVID dollars, CARE funds, that were given to us by the federal government to help with childcare and other things. DHS got a lot of money to do that. Unfortunately there was some abuse and not a whole lot of regulation,” said Sen. Rosino.

Since March of 2020, Oklahoma DHS has received $791 million under the umbrella of the Federal Child Care Development grant.

“The federal government just said push this money out, push this money out, we'll worry about regulating it later, that was a mistake,” said Rosino.

At that time, daycares were also able to “self regulate.”

“One of the things in the childcare piece especially, we were letting providers self attest on whether they were five star, three star, two star. Well, most of them are gonna say they're 5 stars, well then we pay the subsidy based on that,” said Rosino.

The state legislature has already addressed that issue, adding more guardrails and requiring DHS go in and monitor the daycares themselves.

“Now we have regulated that we have asked them to look at it again. going in and looking at them making sure they are five star, three star, two star whatever the number is, to make sure we are not paying them more than they should be getting paid,” said Rosino.

Rosino says he understands that DHS workers have a hard job to do, but says it was important to clean up some of the mess that was made in the agency.

“Here's the one thing I will say about DHS; they have 6,000 employees, they're in 77 counties and they deal with the worst of the worst things to our most vulnerable people. They have a lot and unfortunately yes there are some bad things that happen, but they're the ones that are out there doing the hard work every day. Unfortunately, some of our really good providers are getting cast in this net now about some of these providers that were not doing as well,” said Rosino.

While the legislature will get a copy of the audit to view, Senator Rosino says most of the problems pointed out have already been addressed.

“We have been talking about this for years and the senate in particular has worked hard to fix some of these problems,” said Rosino.

“At Oklahoma Human Services, our commitment to serving communities is rooted in continuous growth and improvement,” said Jeffrey Cartmell, Director of Oklahoma Human Services in a statement provided to News 9. “We value the financial analysis and review provided by our state partners on these COVID-era childcare programs. Their feedback informs strategic planning and drives program improvements, allowing us to provide top-tier services to Oklahomans.