For my talk at Milwaukee Press Club's Gridiron Dinner tonight, I pulled some data about Wisconsin's TANF program over a decade showing that its unspent pot grew from $0 to $214 million from 2011 to 2021, plus other findings. Here is the interactive chart: datawrapper.de/_/UaGOp/

https://twitter.com/MKEPressClub/status/1635339806455758850

Over half a million people in Wisconsin live in poverty and just one-in-five of those families get monthly aid. With $214m, WI could:

-Provide a year of child care to 39,000 kids

-Issue 60,000 transportation stipends for working adults

-Pay 1.5 million past-due electric bills

In the post-Roe era, Republican leaders have promised an “aggressive new pro-life agenda” to “support the whole life and the whole woman.” I compiled and analyzed more than 60 pieces of legislation filed this year that satisfy this stated goal.

Here’s what I found. Lawmakers advanced bills to increase tax breaks to corps who give to religious CPCs and to create a “Maternal Assistance Program,” which sounds like it would provide resources to women but actually just creates an info campaign about where to find the existing (scarce) services.

ICYMI: MS's TANF graft primarily occurred through what are called "Subgrants" -- $ to private orgs to provide services like workforce dev, mentoring. But even at the height of the scandal, this only accounted for half of the spending. Where did the rest go?mississippitoday.org/2022/10/17/mis… We looked at every expenditure labeled under "TANF Work Program" from 2015-2022. Our findings here: mississippitoday.org/wp-content/upl…

From 2015 to 2016, program spending on "contractual services" rose from $162,000 to $6.4 million. There has been no comprehensive audit of this spending.

🧵of testimony from Pastor Reginald Buckley, today at the TANF hearing: “In 2014, the state of Mississippi took the somewhat extreme position of tying TANF support to the administration of a drug-questionnaire. 1/ "In doing so, the subversive suggestion was made that if you are poor, then you are likely to be on drugs. And if you are on drugs, then the state was making a case to deny support through TANF. 2/ jacksonfreepress.com/news/2014/jul/…

I’m at the Democratic Caucus hearing to address the TANF scandal, where current MDHS director Bob Anderson is currently speaking.

Yesterday, I published a report containing every MDHS expenditure labeled under the TANF Work Program 2015-2022. mississippitoday.org/wp-content/upl… Rep. Johnson just asked Anderson if he recommends repealing the 2017 HOPE Act, which created some of the strictest eligibility requirements in the nation. Anderson said yes, and that he’s already asked the agency to repeal the redetermination clause. More: mississippitoday.org/2021/01/29/mis…

Years before MS’s welfare scandal broke, one statistic provided a foreshadowing: We were approving just 1.5% of cash welfare applications.

Today, we approve about 8%. But we’re not the only state like this, per federal data @MSTODAYnews analyzed:

mississippitoday.org/2022/10/05/mis… Texas, for example, has approved just 5% this year. In most states, approval rates in 2022 (green) have dropped since 2016 (red). Nationally, under 30% of applications are approved. Out of $16B in TANF annually, 80% is spent on other things—workforce child care, fatherhood, etc.

The feds have moved to stay a civil case in which they’re trying to seize Teddy DiBiase Jr.’s house. The allegations in the case mirror the federal charges to which former MDHS dir. John Davis pleaded guilty a few weeks ago. More in this previous story: mississippitoday.org/2022/09/26/phi… The case had been sealed for two years before @MSTODAYnews motioned to unseal it in August. Initially, the judge dismissed the complaint (allowing the feds to refile) after Teddy’s attorney successfully argued that DOJ had failed to establish a crime.

The latest texts released by Nancy New and now today by former Gov. Bryant come within a court battle about whether Bryant should have to produce all texts related to the USM-Favre volleyball project. Bryant wants to keep them private #TheBackchannel mississippitoday.org/2022/09/24/phi… Bryant has released select text messages in an attempt to show that he had no idea Favre was using welfare money for the volleyball project in 2017. He suggests his appointed welfare director immediately committed $4m to the project without his knowledge.

Judge Adrienne Wooten questioning John Davis about why he allowed thousands in TANF to go to Brett DiBiase for work he didn’t conduct and to pay for hotel services in New Orleans.
W: Why wasn’t that done (why didn’t you refer the matter to AG)?
D: My neglect.
#TheBackchannel W: Is that neglect? If you knew about it?
D: That was a poor choice of words
W: That’s okay. (Pause)

But I still want my question answered.

(Pointedly:) Why. Did. You. Do. This?

Former DHS director Davis is set to plead guilty to 2 federal and 18 state charges within the TANF scandal. New low-hanging federal charges deal not with the Brett Favre volleyball or concussion projects, but with payments to his WWE wrestler buddy Teddy: mississippitoday.org/2022/09/21/joh… Four co-conspirators in the federal filing are unnamed. I identified them two ways, first by matching up the unnamed orgs/companies’ date of registration listed in the filing.
Org 1: MS 6/22/92
Org 2: MS 5/22/98
Company 1: Wyoming 6/25/18
Company 2: MS 5/11/2017

Let’s dig into what Gov. Reeves said about the MDHS civil suit yesterday, less than a week after removing the attorney who crafted the litigation — the latest wrinkle in Mississippi’s welfare scandal.
 
This one is a bit wonky, but bear with me.
mississippitoday.org/2022/07/29/gov… Both the Reeves admin and the attorney, Brad Pigott, say he was let go because he subpoenaed USM Athletic Foundation. The subpoena included their communication with NFL legend Brett Favre and former Gov. Phil Bryant, @MSTODAYnews first reported.
 mississippitoday.org/2022/07/13/phi…

Gov. Phil Bryant screenshotted my tweet below—which touched on my investigation into welfare in the spring of 2019, at the fever pitch of the largest taxpayer theft in state history—and sent it to MDHS Director John Davis. “How is she figuring this?” he asked. #TheBackchannel

https://twitter.com/ayewolfe/status/1121105927187390465

My tweet contained a plain observation. In the poorest state, we left tens of millions of welfare funds unspent — something advocates had screamed about for years. I was digging around in the only public data available, limited and outdated, after MDHS had completely shut me out.

Throwback to “Anna this is about economic development plain and simple!!!” Remember, Brett Favre has other connections to the welfare scandal that still haven’t been fully explained. He was at meetings where officials discussed funneling MDHS funding to a concussion research firm he sponsored and invested in. I reported his involvement months before the auditor revealed the $1.1m payment mississippitoday.org/2020/03/05/the…

“The child support system in Mississippi is f-cked up, and no one knows how to unf-ck it,” I reported last December.
Mississippi's privatized child support enforcement program is now under legislative scrutiny after @MS_DHS signed another 5-year contract. mississippitoday.org/2020/12/28/how… Last fall I poured through federal data and spent over 12 hrs with the contractor's CEO to craft an original analysis of the program, which despite modernization and improvements in some metrics, continues to lag in the areas -- primarily collections -- that mean most to parents.

A play in four acts We’ve seen his name in the news in the last year for expounding on Trump, politics in sports and even the Chauvin trial, but Brett Favre is mum on his connections to an alleged multi-million dollar welfare fraud scheme. mississippitoday.org/2021/05/06/bre…

I recently found an article I wrote in 2014 about our embattled, meager #TANF program. In 6 years covering and, at times, exhaustively poking at welfare, I have never heard an agency official outright say we should expand our benefits and eligibility to offer cash to more people. That happened a couple weeks ago. Read my interview with @MS_DHS Director Bob Anderson here @MSTODAYnews : mississippitoday.org/2020/07/22/qa-…

A nug you may have missed from the @MS_DHS audit released today: Mississippi paid $1.1 million in welfare money to quarterback Brett Favre to appear at events. And then he didn’t go. Read our story on the audit here @MSTODAYnews: mississippitoday.org/2020/05/04/inc…

Last week, I published a story about two Brett Favre pet projects: a concussion research firm, which allegedly received stolen welfare money from a nonprofit, and the new volleyball court at his alma mater, paid for by the same nonprofit. Then I found this email calendar invite: Former Gov. Phil Bryant says he didn’t attend this meeting and while he had discussions with Favre about recruiting the concussion drug company to Mississippi, he said he never suggested Human Services be involved.

News of the alleged public embezzlement scheme within Mississippi’s TANF program, or welfare, explains so much about the secrecy reporters have faced in trying to report on the agency. Here’s what happened when I tried to request TANF records in 2017: scribd.com/document/38582… The ethics commission eventually sided with the newspaper: scribd.com/document/39818…

I take my job pretty seriously and when I don’t have the answer to a question or problem on my beat, I want to find it immediately. But I’m telling you, I am just at a loss on this one. I’ve gotten calls over the last couple years from mostly women who I’ve met while out reporting. They’re calling me, a reporter, because they are homeless. Why? Because they’ve tried literally every other official agency and gotten nowhere.