Monday, August 31, 2009

"Private fortune, public cash"

"Regulators ignored red flags while woman ran lucrative day care business"

"A Jaguar convertible sits in the driveway of Latasha Jackson's million-dollar mansion in Menomonee Falls. Built on a hill with a sprawling back deck overlooking a pond, the 7,600-square-foot home features an indoor swimming pool and indoor basketball court.

"Jackson is not an Olympic swimmer, a professional basketball player or a celebrity of any sort. She is a day care provider in the city of Milwaukee.

"She built her fortune with taxpayer funding from the Wisconsin Shares program.

"And although documents show regulators had many reasons to believe the 32-year-old mother of three was billing the state for kids not in her care, providing false information and otherwise defrauding the system for more than a decade, they continued to pay her.

"That ended Thursday, but only after the state learned the Journal Sentinel was preparing to publish a story on the case. And only when Jackson turned herself in - a day after the newspaper confronted her."

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/56121342.html


So the Journal Sentinel is now the organization that oversees how public money is squandered? How many people do they have to bust before the State of Wisconsin does something about this?

3 comments:

OrbsCorbs said...

Here's a pretty graphic that sums it all up: http://media.journalinteractive.com/images/acountabilityG_083009.jpg.

I understand that there will always be attempts at fraud in a system like this. But how is it that the Journal Sentinel keeps pointing out case after case like this, using the state's own records, but the state does nothing? In fact, it appears that some state workers just go along with the fraud.

SER said...

This is amazing, and the states wonders why people get upset.

They should bust Abshire right along with Jackson for not taking any actions against her.

OKIE said...

I'm with SER on this one. Abshire needs to go to jail herself. One would have to ask if she was getting payments from Jackson.