Ghost daycares. That’s what we’re dealing with now.
An investigation by The Center Square has uncovered multiple Washington state childcare operations collecting massive taxpayer subsidies — while having no children. Zero. One West Seattle address received over $229,000 in nine months from state coffers. When reporters knocked on the door, the residents said plainly: “There is no daycare here. There never has been.”
Some of these phantom operations were pulling in over $20,000 a month. From taxpayers. For services that didn’t exist. For children who weren’t there:
Many Washington state daycare providers receive large taxpayer subsidies, but an investigation by The Center Square found several that had few, if any, children and at least one establishment that received hundreds of thousands of dollars despite residents at the listed address indicating it was not a daycare.
Yet politicians charged with overseeing the spending continue to publicly say there is no problem with improper payments to the daycares and, instead, have been criticizing journalists for investigating the potential fraud. No state official has announced an investigation or crackdown though the legislature instituted some reforms last session.
