More than $19 million in mistakes by the Missouri Department of Social Services will hurt the very people the agency is charged with helping.
An audit recently found the department mistakenly paid more than $19 million to child care facilities to subsidize low-income families and should refund the federal government.
The funds distributed through federal grants didn't meet the government's requirements for record-keeping, the Columbia Missourian reported.
The Associated Press reported the audit by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General looked at a sample of 128 months of subsidized child care reports - out of more than 8,000 total months of records - between July 2013 and June 2015. The total child care subsidies Missouri paid out in that time was $102.5 million, which includes $70.8 million in federal funds.
All but four of those months contained inadequate attendance records, and some cases had no documentation of attendance or the dates were not noted. Parents did not always sign the attendance sheets and the state didn't always get attendance records from child care providers that went out of business.
Auditors estimated from the sample that $19.1 million of the federal payments didn't meet eligibility requirements and should be refunded.
If the money is refunded, where will it come from? Not from the employees who made the mistakes. And not likely through the Legislature. When lawmakers return in January, you can bet they won't be too eager to fund an additional $19 million to compensate for money refunded to the feds. Quite the opposite, many lawmakers probably won't want to fund the department at its current levels.
That could leave Social Services clients to bear any costs through reductions in services.
That could mean fewer grants to help low-income families with child care. The department also offers services related to adoption, health care, food assistance and services for the blind to name a few.
We hope this doesn't happen. Meanwhile, we urge Gov. Eric Greitens to take a close look at what caused these problems, and take needed action to ensure it doesn't happen again.