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OPEGA director presents 2025 annual report; committee presses for quicker child‑welfare reviews but legal limits remain
Summary
OPEGA Director Peter Slack presented the office's 2025 annual report and workplan, and members pressed for faster reviews of a DHHS kinship-placement case in Chelsea; Slack said court and prosecutorial constraints limit what OPEGA can publicly report until the criminal case advances.
Peter Slack, director of the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA), presented the office’s 2025 annual report and outlined priorities for 2026, including a day‑care payments timeliness report, a planned Juniper Ridge landfill review, and a special project on the potato seed certification program.
Slack summarized recent OPEGA work — procurement and conflict‑of‑interest reviews at the Office of Cannabis Policy, veteran‑home financial stewardship help, and a special project sampling student loan repayment tax-credit usage — and said the next deliverable is a report on timeliness of payments to day‑care providers for foster‑care placements targeted for the committee’s second February meeting.
Committee members pressed Slack about a separate, sensitive review of DHHS handling of a kinship placement in Chelsea. Several members, including Senator Jeff Timberlake, said they wanted answers sooner and questioned why the committee must wait for the criminal prosecution to conclude. Timberlake framed the issue as oversight of departmental performance: “I’m trying to figure out whether the department failed in what they did or not.”
Slack explained legal limits: in some cases where a child fatality or serious harm is linked to a prosecution, Title 22 and court decisions constrain what can be disclosed publicly and when. He said he could review records "behind the curtain" but that current law and a pending law‑court decision limit what can be reported publicly: “There is a special provision in title 22 that once the prosecution is done and the attorney general and the commissioner of HHS make a determination that it won't interfere, the legislature has provided that much more information about what happened can be public.”
Members urged colleagues on the judiciary committee to advance legislation (LD 127 and LD 273 were cited in discussion) to clarify statutory authority so the oversight committee can conduct or hear fuller reviews without jeopardizing criminal prosecutions. Slack said OPEGA would pursue access as far as the law permits and keep the committee informed about opportunities to accelerate reviews.
Slack closed by asking the committee’s blessing to let staff begin lower‑priority work (potato seed program) while maintaining the daycare payments report schedule; members agreed and the meeting adjourned.
