Note: The following e-newsletter was distributed to Sen. Christian’s subscribers Jan. 30, 2026. To subscribe to Sen. Christian’s e-newsletters, click here.

In this video clip, I offer an amendment calling for a performance audit of the DCYF Oversight Board.  Click here to see my proposal shot down. It illustrates the problem we have in establishing accountability for this troubled state agency.

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

If you’re wondering whether Minnesota-style social-services fraud is happening in this state, Washington elected officials have an answer for you. Don’t look here.

In response to the biggest government-corruption scandal of recent years — a systematic looting of Minnesota Medicaid funding by Somali immigrants, aided and abetted by public officials in that state — majority Democrats in Olympia are doing their best to preempt some very obvious questions.

They’re trying to pressure and intimidate the press. They’re claiming inquiry is racist. Washington’s attorney general, the official ultimately responsible for investigating Medicaid fraud, is urging the public to report news media queries to a state hate-crimes hotline. And as lead Republican on the Senate Human Services Committee, I find myself fighting a bill that would shield the Department of Children, Youth and Families from public scrutiny.

This week, the Human Services Committee passed Senate Bill 5942, eliminating oversight responsibilities from a board charged with overseeing this troubled department. The DCYF Oversight Board, composed of legislators and members of the public, has been a toothless tiger since its creation. But it is the only body that can force this agency to answer to the people. At least it has that authority until this bill clears the Senate and House and is signed into law.

At a time when the Minnesota scandal is looking like the tip of the iceberg, and media organizations are finding credible indications of daycare fraud in this state, Olympia wants to shut the door, turn out the lights and tell us to trust government to police itself. I hope we all know better than that.

No real oversight

I am a legislative member of the DCYF Oversight Board, and I’m no fan. It’s supposed to be a watchdog over the agency. Lapdog is more like it. Reports from the board regurgitate material provided by the agency. Members talk about the serious problems in our child welfare and juvenile justice programs – and talk and talk and talk. The board has the authority to examine the agency’s contracts with social-service providers, but it hasn’t been doing it.

That’s the significance of the video snippet above. You see me offering an amendment calling for a performance audit of the Oversight Board that would ask what exactly we are getting for the $300,000 we spend on it each year. The committee chair shoots it down. She says the State Auditor’s office already is working on an audit of DCYF and has everything under control.

Except it doesn’t. State Auditor Pat McCarthy acknowledged in an interview this week that this is a financial audit, not a performance audit. Her office won’t be asking the tough questions that need to be asked about the agency’s many management failures. Her audit will not directly address public concerns about possible daycare fraud in this state.

And if this review of financial paperwork finds red flags in social service contracting, the responsibility for criminal investigation of Medicaid fraud falls to our state attorney general’s office. This is the same AG who tells us asking questions is a hate crime.

Our existing political institutions clearly aren’t up to the job. That’s a polite way of saying it. I’ll have a proposal shortly to deal with this issue. Stay tuned – there’s more to come.

 

Two bills put the state in the abortion business, and make all of us pay

It’s no secret that I oppose abortion. I also know it’s the law of the land, there are many who disagree with me, and there are a thousand gradients of opinion in between. But I think there is one point on which just about all of us find common ground. We don’t think government should be in the business of promoting abortion. Two bills this session cross that line.

Senate Bill 6182, sponsored by Sen. Jessica Bateman, D-Olympia, would tax health insurers to subsidize abortion clinics. We can expect this tax to be passed on to all of us in the form of higher premiums. It amounts to $9.84 per policy the first year and $1.98 thereafter. Where they came up with those numbers, I don’t know, but I don’t think I should be forced to pay a dime for something I oppose with my heart and soul. No one else should either. This bill received a hearing in the Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee Friday. A companion measure has been introduced in the House, House Bill 2657.

Senate Bill 5917, also sponsored by Bateman, would allow the state Department of Corrections to redistribute an enormous stockpile of abortion pills, free of charge, to clinics across the state. These pills were purchased for use by female prison inmates in 2023 and 2025 and the concern is that they will soon expire. The intent, according to testimony, is to ensure these pills don’t go to waste. But it’s not just these pills. The bill sets up a permanent process and carves out a new role for state government in acquiring, distributing and dispensing abortion pills statewide. The bill declares an emergency where none exists, preventing Washington voters from filing a referendum to overturn it.

This measure was passed by the Senate Human Services Committee Tuesday and moves to the Senate Ways and Means Committee. In the House, a companion measure, House Bill 2182, also is advancing.

In the news:

Terrible time to shut down oversight of WA children’s agency

In this op-ed, published this week in The Center Square, the Cheney Free Press and other publications, I describe the campaign of pressure and intimidation my Democratic colleagues are exerting on the news media in Washington state.

By Sen. Leonard Christian

When Olympia says, “Don’t look here,” it’s time to start looking really, really hard. Minnesota’s deepening Somali daycare fraud scandal naturally is prompting questions about whether the same thing might be happening in Washington state. And one of the most chilling things I’ve seen lately from our increasingly imperious Democratic leaders is their effort to squelch independent investigation by the news media.

They’re saying inquiry is racist. The attorney general is hinting reporters might be prosecuted under hate-crimes statutes. The House speaker had this to say to a reporter for The Center Square who visited a half-dozen home-based daycare facilities and found no signs of childcare activity – no parents dropping off kids, no children playing outside, nothing.

“You may have the right to do that, but it’s not right to do that,” she declared.

What astounds me is that news media outlets across the state haven’t taken this as a challenge. Thirty years ago a high-handed comment like that would have sent an army of reporters into the field. Within days there would have been a knock at the door of every home listed in public records as a Medicaid-supported daycare operation. By now I am sure we would be seeing a spate of stories about lax oversight at the state Department of Children, Youth & Families.

Now, I understand the state’s struggling press has a hard enough time these days playing its traditional watchdog role. Some of the state’s last few editorial writers are calling for accountability from DCYF, skirting the issue of potential fraud but highlighting this agency’s many other management failures. At least that’s a start.

But what a terrible time this is to shut down oversight of this troubled state agency.

Believe it or not, that’s what a pair of bills sponsored by my colleagues would do.

Senate Bill 5926, from Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island, would block the release of address and ownership information for daycares operated out of private homes. This bill was introduced four days before the Minnesota daycare scandal story broke nationwide on Dec. 26, so it is hard to draw a direct connection.

Yet revelations of multi-million-dollar Medicaid fraud schemes operated by Somali immigrants have been unfolding for months in Minnesota. The bill’s intent section claims that childcare providers operating out of their own homes face “harassment, doxxing, and targeted retaliation,” something that didn’t occur in Washington state before Dec. 22 and hasn’t occurred anytime since. These are the charges embattled Democrats are making in Minnesota as they attempt to discourage media investigations. Minnesota is where the whole inquiry-is-racist line got started. It is amazing how quickly Washington electeds picked up on it.

So if this bill has nothing to do with the Land of 10,000 Lakes, it is one of the strangest political coincidences of all time. The bill’s sponsor has announced she is withdrawing it from consideration, and I can’t blame her, given the optics here. But in the Legislature it’s a mistake to presume any proposal is dead until the final gavel falls.

The other bill is just as noxious and it appears to be advancing. Senate Bill 5942, sponsored by Sen. Claire Wilson, D-Federal Way, would change the name of the DCYF Oversight Board to the DCYF Accountability Board. I am a board member and I know this name change has been in the works for months. Another member complained the word “oversight” is racist – I am not making this up. But when the bill was dropped on Dec. 26 it was a shock to see it also eliminates the board’s oversight responsibilities..

This bill’s sponsor happens to chair the oversight board, and she says it merely takes away authority the board isn’t using. I say that’s the problem.

For four years, DCYF has failed to release data for daycare programs, making audits impossible. And the failures at this agency run deeper than potential fraud in this and other Medicaid-funded programs. Last year the state paid a record $500 million to settle lawsuits, most of it due to DCYF negligence to protect children under its care. Child deaths and severe injuries are soaring. Overcrowded juvenile justice facilities managed by DCYF have degenerated into chaos due to a new state policy keeping offenders in the juvenile system until age 25. Strikes me we need more oversight, not less.

If we’re going to ensure Washington turns a blind eye to DCYF mismanagement, I think we should call this board what it would become. I have introduced Senate Bill 6020 to change the name to the “DCYF Social Club.”

I am glad at least some media outlets are resisting pressure and intimidation from my colleagues, and are willing to do the job Olympia won’t.

Sen. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley, is lead Republican on the Senate Human Services Committee.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leonard Christian

4th Legislative District

 

Contact me!

If you have a comment about state government, or a concern with a state agency, I hope you will reach out to my office. My most important duty is to serve you.

Mailing address: Post Office Box 40404, Olympia, WA  98504

Email: Leonard.Christian@leg.wa.gov

Phone: (360) 786-7606

Leave a message on the Legislative Hotline: 1 (800) 562-6000