WA Gov Bob Ferguson announces new $251 MILLION funding for childcare centers after TPM expose

Washington State Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson announced an additional $251 million for child care providers offering the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) for the 2026-27 school year, adding 42 new sites across the state. The funding announcement came the same day The Post Millennial released an explosive report about a network of Seattle area Somali-run child care centers potentially abusing millions of taxpayer funds.

The ECEAP is a state-funded Pre-K program for children ages 3 to 4 and provides free preschool for low-income families. Some of the home child care centers featured in the TPM investigation offer the ECEAP, according to records from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF).

The new public-private funding will come from the State of Washington and the Ballmer Group. It's unclear how much funding will come from the state. In addition to the 42 new sites, 105 existing child care providers who offer the ECEAP will also benefit from the funding.

"As we're facing budget challenges, our public-private partnership is expanding access to high-quality early education for thousands of kids across our state," Gov. Ferguson said in a Monday press release. "This expansion means more children, including our most vulnerable, will get the support they need to thrive in school and beyond."

Washington state has been the target of criticism since late last year, when claims of widespread taxpayer-funded fraud in the child care business surfaced following an investigation by independent journalist Nick Shirley in Minnesota.

This led to an investigation by the Washington State Auditor's Office, which discovered that over $413 million in child care payments could not be traced and identified $37 million in suspicious payments in 2025 due to the absence or incompleteness of required attendance documentation. The auditor stated that these discoveries do not establish fraud, but rather raise concerns regarding oversight and documentation, the Center Square first reported.

Critics have suggested that some taxpayer-funded home daycares with 0 to 10 child capacities may be manipulating attendance counts to get higher payouts, as revealed by independent investigations.

Additionally, Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, threatened earlier this year to prosecute journalists reporting on potentially fraudulent child care centers, instead of investigating the alleged discrepancies.