City bureaucrats paid hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to a troubled day care operator even after they’d cited her for unsafe conditions, a new lawsuit reveals.
The city quietly sued Katarzyna Rongers-Bluma late last week, accusing her of stealing nearly $280,000 by billing for phantom kids through her Kathy’s Day Care sites in Queens and the Bronx.
The Administration for Children’s Services discovered the alleged fraud more than a year ago, but the city didn’t take action until after the Daily News published its investigation on day care centers.
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Kathy’s Day Care was one of dozens of troubled operators profiled by The News in a two-day investigation that began on Feb. 11.
The lawsuit exposed even more communication breakdowns by government.
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Rongers-Bluma, who uses at least three aliases, has for years run six licensed sites in Queens and the Bronx under different names. ACS had approved her to receive vouchers for low-income families.
In December 2009 the city Buildings Department shut down one of her sites in Jamaica for failing to fix an inoperable fire alarm. Because of this, she was denied another license in 2011.
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The News revealed that in May 2014 the state revoked yet another Rongers-Bluma license after a special needs child wandered out of her site in Elmhurst and crossed busy Junction Blvd. City investigators discovered that cars screeched to a halt to avoid hitting the child, and that all the kids were supervised by a single staffer who wasn’t cleared to oversee children.
The News revealed day care oversight in New York City is a bureaucratic mess, with state and city agencies keeping inspection data separately and operators cited for egregious incidents continuing to care for children.
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The ACS lawsuit does not explain why Kathy’s was able to continue receiving vouchers year after year, racking up $279,498 in bogus bills through June 2014. Rongers-Bluma put in for duplicate or nonexistent children or for meals not served, the suit charges. ACS cut her off in December 2014 — five years after she was first red-flagged by the city.
For years the Health Department didn’t know which operators got ACS subsidies, so they didn’t notify ACS of revocations. Early last year they began sending revocation information to ACS. On Thursday, ACS told The News a project is underway “to better synchronize the ACS and (Health Department) databases to avoid future miscommunications.”
Despite the investigation by The News and the lawsuit, a day care center in Elmhurst, Queens, linked to Rongers-Bluma was up and running Thursday, approved to care for children by the Health Department.
Agency spokesman Christopher Miller said the site was inspected last week and the department “is closely monitoring this site to ensure it is adequately run and safe for children, and as of right now, there are no imminent health hazards.”
Rongers-Bluma, who lives in a $1.1 million red-brick six-bedroom on 225th St. in Bayside, Queens, did not return calls.