I have been a member of the Joint Audit and Evaluation Committee in the Maryland General Assembly since 2015 and am the longest-serving member. This committee reviews the audits of state government agencies performed by the Office of Legislative Audits. Over the years, I have observed numerous state agencies with poor audits that included what we refer to as “repeat findings” — issues identified in prior audits that had not been addressed. For me, it has been a source of ongoing frustration, as serious problems that are repeatedly identified never get fixed. My focus has been on the state’s failure to hold individuals accountable for doing their jobs.
On Oct. 29, we held a hearing on the notorious audit of the Department of Human Services (DHS). This audit found that DHS was not adequately conducting background checks on individuals who had direct contact with children under its care and neglected to reconcile its list of providers with Maryland’s Sex Offender Registry. Because of this, several children under state care were subject to abuse by an individual working for one of its contractors who was a registered sex offender. Another disturbing finding was the agency’s over-reliance on placing children in hotel rooms with one-on-one providers who are not licensed or, again, background checked. The impact of this finding was driven home only days after the audit was released when 16-year-old Kanaiyah Ward committed suicide in the hotel room where DHS was housing her.
The DHS response to this audit has been one of the worst I have seen in the 10 years I have served on this committee. DHS Secretary Rafael López discussed how his agency was working as a team, noting that they even have a hashtag. He spoke about how, before action could be taken to remove children from these unlicensed settings, they first had to develop a technological infrastructure to more easily determine their locations. It appears that the fact that the child’s name was on a spreadsheet rather than a modern, searchable database was a more urgent matter than the child’s physical presence in a hotel. He boasted that he had been able to search just that morning and determined that there were five children currently in hotels. What he did not mention throughout the entire hearing — until I asked him directly — was the death of Kanaiyah Ward.
I am on the record calling for the secretary to resign — not just due to this audit or Kanaiyah’s death, though either would be enough. The final straw came the night before the hearing when we learned that the secretary’s directive, issued the week prior, prohibiting the placement of children in unlicensed settings like hotels, had been violated just four days after its issuance. Secretary López lacks basic control over his department and is therefore not the person to fix this agency.
Over the last three years, Secretary López has had the opportunity to rectify some of these issues. When he came into office, he had a blueprint for the department’s problems, as identified in prior negative audits. The pace at which they have addressed the safety of children in DHS care is unacceptable — from criminal background checks to placing children in unlicensed settings — these should have been the number one priority of this administration, even if they had to make it happen in a more low-tech way. Such measures should be standard procedure in any department responsible for keeping children safe. Quality assurance processes and oversight of the local departments should have been addressed immediately as first steps in stopping many of the issues uncovered by this audit. A child died as a direct result of several of the findings in this audit — this is not an accounting error to be dismissed and ignored by a bureaucracy — this is a life.
Gov. Wes Moore’s reaction to Kanaiyah’s death, the audit and his support for Secretary López have been disappointing. His reflex response to many issues is to blame someone else; he blames the “inherited deficit” and attributes bad audits to the “previous administration,” while blaming the Trump administration for just about everything else. But the “it wasn’t me” excuse rarely works more than once, and it rings even more hollow as we near the end of the third year of his term. He cannot expect Marylanders to take him seriously about accountability when he does everything in his power to avoid it. Leadership comes with accountability. Leadership starts at the top. As Maryland’s governor, he is at the top.
Steve Arentz is a Republican representing District 36, including Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Caroline counties, in the Maryland House of Delegates.
