Under Thompson, Wisconsin's welfare bureaucracy flourished. W-2 required virtually every AFDC household to work off its grant. Once President Clinton signed the legislation in August, Wisconsin no longer needed federal permission to adopt W-2. AFDC rules had required state or local government agencies to be involved in running the program. It even spent welfare money on fanny packs sporting the Maximus name.
Violations also exist outside the financial realm.
Last August, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged Maximus with discrimination, for placing a woman in a job for which men earned higher pay. Also, a state commission found that Opportunities Industrialization Center, another welfare contractor in Milwaukee, failed to stop sexual harassment of one of its own staff by a supervisor. Of course, these are just the abuses we've heard about. Since the state allowed private welfare contractors to audit themselves, no one really knows how these agencies used hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. Yet according to the LAB, DWD didn't begin to scrutinize welfare contractors' activities until New York media published reports of Maximus' alleged improprieties in connection with welfare contracts.