A Georgia lawmaker told us she could not get a single invoice out of her state's child welfare agency.
The Center Square got them. Now lawmakers are drafting legislation to increase transparency over how the department spends taxpayer money.
That impact was made possible through you.
Reporter Johnny Edwards obtained invoices and purchase orders showing Georgia's Department of Human Services spent at least $639,000 over two years on four police-grade investigative products. Those products can track where a smartphone goes, copy the contents of a locked phone, scan social media and the dark web, and run facial recognition.
The technology is part of the department's effort to find missing foster children and fight sex trafficking. However, lawmakers are questioning if the social services agency has the legal authority to run those kinds of investigations.
At a time when privacy concerns are meeting advanced technologies, these questions need answering.
So our reporting kept digging.
The Center Square obtained an opinion from the General Assembly's Office of Legislative Counsel, which found no law that specifically gives the division police powers, though it noted the department could point to broader language elsewhere in the code.
We also obtained an internal department email through an Open Records Act request. In it, the director of the department's Special Victims Unit tells his staff that when a case needs a forensic interview and local agencies will not take it, his unit will become the primary investigating agency.
We then shared these insights directly with the lawmakers who oversee these agencies. Republican State Representative Beth Camp, who chairs the House Judiciary Juvenile Committee, said she was "100% not OK with that." And after talking with The Center Square, she announced she is drafting legislation to increase transparency over how the department spends taxpayer money. Democratic State Representative Mary Margaret Oliver questioned whether the department has the legal authority to use invasive monitoring technology at all. See what lawmakers said.
The Center Square found the spending. Camp took it from there.