Should the Trump administration settle for one-time fines, universities, chastened by the threats of the past few months, may yet recover their footing. But if, as seems entirely possible, the administration is determined to reshape the intellectual life and values of faculty members and students alike, then such recovery will be impossible.Oh my goodness, reshape their intellectual life and values. Horrors!
The case, Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, asks whether ISPs must terminate internet service to users accused, but not convicted, of piracy.If the Supreme Court affirms the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning, ISPs might be pressured to disconnect users after receiving infringement claims, without waiting for any court to confirm wrongdoing.
Amnon Shoenfeld worked for King County for more than three decades, including 11 years at DCHS, and retired in 2014 as director of the department’s mental health and substance abuse division.
Shoenfeld said he was appalled at the lack of oversight the audit found, but when he dug into the numbers he found they “didn’t compute.”
Perplexity was able to access information from multiple other sources to get this assessment. Yeah, I think the King County auditor Kymber Waltmunson needs to go.The reason such a huge mistake happened and went unnoticed for so long is basically due to a combination of lax oversight, rapid growth in grant funding, and insufficient internal controls at the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS).
Between 2019 and 2024, the grant funding managed by DCHS skyrocketed from $22 million to over $1.5 billion. This rapid expansion overwhelmed the department’s ability or preparedness to properly monitor and manage the grants. Auditors found that DCHS was largely failing to do basic financial oversight: in 2023, only 1% of grantees’ financial records were examined, a sharp drop from the policy that calls for 33% review annually.
DCHS also took on more financial risk intentionally by giving contracts to many organizations with little or no government contracting experience as part of an equity strategy. However, they failed to establish a sufficient “safety net” to monitor these new grantees properly.
Further, the audit detailed many instances of altered invoices, unapproved payments to subcontractors, and thousands of dollars in untracked stipends or prepaid debit card distributions. The department also lacked formal written policies and training for staff on how to review and approve expenses.
The $900 million reporting error itself was discovered only after a retired employee reviewed the auditor’s initial report and spotted the discrepancy. This indicates that the original audit report contained significant calculation or reporting errors that were not caught during the audit's initial review.
In summary, the mistake wasn’t just a simple math error but reflected deeper systemic problems: rapid growth of funds without corresponding oversight, internal control failures, inadequate policies and staff training, and an environment where errors and possibly fraud could flourish unnoticed until the recent audit exposed them. Public officials described the audit findings as a "total disaster" and "damning," emphasizing the need for urgent reform and better oversight.
