5 EYEWITNESS NEWS first reported last month that the state still gave millions of dollars from the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to some daycare providers who had patterns of serious safety violations over several years.
Rep. Kristin Robbins, (R) Maple Grove, is now preparing a bill she hopes to introduce this week which will make it easier for state regulators to halt CCAP payments to daycare providers who’ve been warned repeatedly about serious violations which could possibly jeopardize the health and safety of children.
“Right now, they have some authority to stop payments, but it is not required. So, they’re not exercising it as we have seen in some of the C-CAP cases you found,” said Robbins. “The statute says they ‘may’ stop payment under certain conditions. It doesn’t say they ‘must.’”
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5 EYEWITNESS NEWS discovered one daycare facility had 95 safety violations, some of them serious, over the course of four years, and state records showed that the daycare center still received nearly $8 million in CCAP funding even when the state placed the facility on a conditional license for two years in 2022.
Under Robbins’ bill, a daycare provider with that type of track record would have its CCAP funding withheld until the provider fixes problems found by state regulators.
