Government Accountability That Works in the States
Minnesota’s program of child care for lower income families, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), has been front and center of late as the poster child for government waste, fraud and abuse. As reported across the media, fraud in the CCAP program has been substantial; the fraudsters have been the operators, not the families that require childcare as a condition of employment. The state and most significantly the counties failed at every turn to verify the legitimacy of the individuals drawing down the taxpayers money.
While most attention has been focused on the apparent fact and scope of the fraud, far less has been given to the systemic weaknesses that permitted it. A 2019 review by the state’s nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor found weak eligibility verification by providers, poor alignment between provider billing and actual attendance, and missing controls in the state’s payment system, conditions that made fraud easier and recovery harder. It failed to find, however, what was right in front of the Auditor – payments to operators providing no child care services at all.
The lesson here is clear: integrity must be designed into operations by giving state and county governments and agencies the tools they need up front, not bolted on after headlines.
In county-administered states, of which Minnesota is one, fraud risk is heightened by a combination of disconnected and inconsistent processes and systems. 87 counties results in 87 ways to check out operators on the front end, set staff training standards, and audit operators’ performance. That patchwork creates seams, uneven document standards, lagging or no data reviews, and variable enforcement, where bad actors find the weakest links. The fix isn’t to strip local control but to require a shared infrastructure that includes uniform verification checklists, centralized analytics for cross‑county pattern detection, and surge teams that can be deployed to investigate bad actors. Paired with tools like the Medicaid Staffing Flexibility and Protection Act or similar pending SNAP legislation, states can stand up an oversight system with one set of metrics and vendor scorecards, bringing local knowledge and statewide consistency together so fraud has nowhere to hide. This change requires all levels of government to collaborate in identifying, and finding the resources to fill, the human capital gaps, technology and other requirements needed to build an effective and efficient system. The goal is scale and speed with transparency, so schemes like falsified attendance or billing for nonexistent care are caught early.
The Medicaid Staffing Flexibility and Protection Act of 2025 (H.R. 6254) is one such step forward. It would let states contract surge capacity for eligibility determinations, redeterminations, and fair hearings, while banning any incentive to delay or deny care and prohibiting conflicts with managed care plans. Done right, that means more eyes on documentation, quicker cross‑checks against external data, and faster fair hearings to correct errors, without creating perverse incentives to deny eligiblity. Smart flexibility paired with strong guardrails matter.
SNAP is moving in a similar direction. The SNAP Staffing Flexibility bill (H.R. 2811) would allow states to add contractors to blended workforces during spikes or staffing shortages, again with explicit prohibitions on incentives to deny eligibility as well as public notification of system failures and federal oversight. That flexibility should be tied to concrete controls: real‑time eligibility verification, data‑matching against other state systems for duplicate enrollment, and vendor contracts that pay only for accuracy and timeliness.
As taxpayers, we deserve real accountability. Likewise, qualified beneficiaries deserve the most seamless and timely provision of benefits. To achieve these core goals, in Minnesota’s CCAP program, the state and the counties should be allowed to pair staffing flexibility with public dashboards on eligibility timeliness and error rates, routine audits of provider claims against attendance, and clear, rapid‑response pathways to suspend bad actors while protecting eligible families. Minnesota’s CCAP history shows what happens when verification and oversight lag, but these federal flexibility proposals show how to fix CCAP and also take on the largest, most costly welfare programs.