The Metropolitan King County Council unanimously voted Tuesday to require stricter fiscal oversight of the county’s grant funding after a recent audit found unapproved payments and possible fraud within the Department of Community and Human Services’ nearly billion-dollar-a-year grant program.

And the county’s new proposed budget, released Tuesday, would allow the department to staff up to conduct that fiscal oversight.

A recent audit found DCHS has increased its grantmaking from $922 million in 2019-20 to $1.8 billion in 2023-34. At the same time, the department has awarded grants to more “high risk” organizations — those that have little history of working with government or little financial oversight in place — while failing to appropriately monitor their work.

The funding growth was

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