A House committee on Tuesday heard a report by the Auditor General that was highly critical of the state Office of Early Learning, with findings ranging from scant monitoring to late-running technology to thousands of payment errors.

"This is quite the parade of horribles," said Rep. Matt, Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach.

But while the findings troubled members of the House Pre-K12 Appropriations Subcommittee, they were reassured by OEL’s new director, Mel Jurado, who was ready with a wide-ranging response. Jurado, formerly chair of the Hillsborough Early Learning Coalition for eight years, took the reins at OEL just as the Auditor General’s office was completing 7,000 hours of work on the audit.

"This has been a valuable document as we mobilize and prepare to move forward to strengthen performance and efficiencies," she told the panel. "We have addressed each and every one of the 32 findings."

The Office of Early Learning oversees the state’s School Readiness and Voluntary Prekindergarten Education programs, collaborating with the Departments of Education and Children and Family Services. The audit looked into all three entities, along with ten of the state’s 31 early learning coalitions.

During the 2010-11 fiscal year, the School Readiness Program served 236,147 children on a budget of $683.1 million, more than 70 percent coming from federal funds, while the VPK Program served 164,388 children on a budget of $404.4 million, which came from state general revenue.

A key finding of the audit: that 16,589 people had received subsidized child care benefits totaling $39.8 million under work-dependent eligibility while also collecting $54.2 million in unemployment insurance. The report found that OEL did not conduct data matches between the School Readiness Program, which serves children to help their parents become self-sufficient, with the state’s unemployment insurance benefit payment data.

Gaetz and Rep. Marti Coley, R-Marianna and subcommittee chair, asked Sherrill Norman of the Auditor General’s office for a projected dollar amount of the losses.

"Is this blatant mismanagement, or a misunderstanding of policies and procedures?" Rep. Jimmie Smith, R-Inverness, asked Norman.

"It may be just the changes that have occurred within OEL over time," Norman replied, "as far as how much leeway they want to give [early learning] coalitions."

Committee members asked Jurado to provide a prioritized to-do list and specifics of her responses to the audit. Among her plans for OEL: A dedicated fraud unit, which Jurado said would use "repurposed" staff and require no additional funding.

Rep. Janet Adkins, R-Fernandina Beach, noted that implementation of the Early Learning Information System (ELLIS) is behind schedule – moved back from June 2012 to the following year.

"What triggers are in place with that software that will prevent fraud?" Adkins asked.

The system would allow OEL to catch fraud at the front end, Jurado replied.

Coley asked if lawmakers could do anything on the policy side to strengthen the opportunity to pursue fraud, and Jurado said her agency would be all in favor of that.

"There are times that people don’t want to take the fraud cases further because it’s such a few dollars, but we know those few dollars add up," she said. "Every time I see a case of fraud, I see two- and three- and four-year-olds that are not receiving the care they deserve because someone else has decided to perpetrate a misdeed."