To committee on Fish and Wildlife.
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Speaker's Appointments
September 23, 2009
Patrick Fuller
Assembly Chief Clerk
17 West Main Street, Suite 401
Madison, WI 53703
Dear Chief Clerk Fuller:
I am appointing Representative Don Pridemore to the Personal Privacy Committee to replace Representative Scott Suder during his military deployment.
This appointment is effective immediately.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Sheridan
Assembly Speaker
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Speaker's Communications
September 23, 2009
Patrick Fuller
Assembly Chief Clerk
17 West Main Street, Suite 401
Madison, WI 53703
Dear Chief Clerk Fuller:
Pursuant to Assembly Rule
42 (3)(c), I am withdrawing Assembly Bill 426
from the Assembly Committee on Ways and Means and re-referring it to the Assembly Committee on Jobs, the Economy and Small Business.
I have the consent of Representative Gary Hebl, chairperson of the Assembly Committee on Ways and Means, to take this action.
Thank you for your immediate attention to this referral.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Sheridan
Assembly Speaker
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State of Wisconsin
Legislative Audit Bureau
Madison
September 23, 2009
To the Honorable, the Legislature:
Earlier this year, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee directed this office to conduct a comprehensive audit of the State's child care subsidy program, Wisconsin Shares, which is administered by the Department of Children and Families (DCF). Our June 2009 letter report on the first phase of that audit identified numerous eligibility, wage verification, and record-keeping problems and estimated that, as a result, $22.5 million in improper subsidy payments had been made in 2008. Our evaluation of the overall effectiveness of child care regulation is ongoing, but we are writing at this time to disclose a serious problem we discovered during the course of our work.
In July 2009, we began to compare the addresses of registered sex offenders to addresses for the sites at which all licensed and certified child care providers care for children. We subsequently found four matches. DCF and the Department of Corrections (DOC), which maintains Wisconsin's Sex Offender Registry, were notified immediately and have confirmed the accuracy of the matches we found in electronic records. They are continuing to follow up and at this point believe that no child was harmed as a result of the situations we identified. However, we could not independently determine whether registered sex offenders had ever been present while care was being provided, and unless procedures are implemented to ensure similar situations do not occur in the future, such a potential will exist.
In response to our findings, DCF issued a memorandum on August 25, 2009, directing state licensing and county certification staff to search an electronic database of registered sex offenders for anyone who applies for licensure or certification as a child care provider.
Our work on sex offender data matches is complete, but we are continuing to compare DCF's information on child care providers, their employees, and other household members with both criminal records maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Justice and records of substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect maintained by DCF. If necessary, we will report our findings separately upon completion of our analyses. We expect that the entire child care regulation evaluation will be completed in December 2009.
We appreciate the courtesy and cooperation of DCF and DOC in completing this analysis.
Sincerely,
Janice Mueller
State Auditor
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Representative Nelson moved that the Assembly stand adjourned until pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 1.
The question was: Shall the Assembly stand adjourned?
Motion carried.
The Assembly stood adjourned.
11:18 A.M.
