The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services announced another failure to properly account for and spend public dollars yesterday. They released a Draft County Audit Report: Hamilton County which states that the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services is responsible for $224 million that was misspent between 2002 and 2004. In addition ODJFS said that $1.7 billion in expenditures on public assistance, child support, and children services funds were "unauditable."

Last year it was revealed that ODJFS had illegally used hundreds of millions of TANF dollars to match federal Medicaid and Food Stamp funds. Add to this, the fact that the agency has never accurately predicted TANF funds and allowed its TANF reserve to climb over a billion dollars at one point and it makes you wonder what kind of fiscal controls or oversight exists in this agency. Of course Hamilton County officials are contending that everything they did was with the blessing of the state, so this is all bound to end up in court and may even require a state bailout at some point.

Unfortunately while the squabbling continues, Ohio's poverty rate will continue to climb and the publics’ confidence in state government will continue to decline.