The Centralia School District paid $372,000 to settle claims with the state Attorney General’s Office in 2014 after fraudulent Medicaid match claims came to light.
In a way, the district paid the price for misdeeds in a program used by school districts throughout the state.
The negotiations with the Attorney General’s Office came after an exposé in the pages of The Chronicle that detailed how some administrators were actively taking advantage of the system.
In a meeting with The Chronicle’s editorial board Tuesday, Attorney General Bob Ferguson explained that his office is now focusing on the consultants who schooled administrators on how to claim the reimbursable time.
The office is no longer targeting individual districts.
“What the Centralia School District case identified for us was the larger scheme that was taking place,” Managing Assistant Attorney General Michael Pellicciotti said.
“It’s not necessarily in our interest now to go after each school district and redistribute the funds in that same way, but it is in our interest to now hold JTEC (consultants) accountable, which obviously financially benefitted significantly. … We’re talking about a lot of money moving.”
The Attorney General’s Office is conducting important work, returning millions of dollars in misappropriated taxpayer money to government coffers.
Unfortunately, it’s work that will come to an end — or become much more difficult — unless the state Legislature moves to extend the Medicaid Fraud False Claims Act, which was voted into law in 2012 and gives the Attorney General more tools in combating the fraud that swept through the Centralia School District.
The act is currently set to expire in 2016.
The legislation that would renew the act is moving through the House, but has all but stalled in the state Senate.
“To be candid, it baffles me why there could be any opposition to it,” Ferguson said. “There’s uncertainty in the (fraud) division on, ‘Am I going to have a job next year?’ I think we have a compelling story to tell now about the progress we’ve been making.”
The act allows the state not only to pursue funds that were fraudulently acquired, but also provides a deterrent against future malfeasance.
Pellicciotti noted that it’s not always the intention of those targeted by the Attorney General’s Office to commit fraud.
We believe that to be the case in Centralia, where a few over-zealous administrators appear to have used questionable means to acquire more than their fair share of Medicaid funds.
Still, the Attorney General’s Office must have the tools to pursue the misuse of the taxpayers’ money when it occurs.
We encourage legislators in both the House and Senate to approve the renewal of this common sense legislation.
