Texas state legislators withdrew efforts to spend millions of dollars to buy what experts call the ineffective week of child identification of kits after Propublic and Texas Tribune reported that legislators were trying to finance the program again.
This is the second consecutive budget cycle in which the consulting legislature, which promises to help find missing children, only to reverse the course after news organizations documented the lack of evidence that the kits work.
Propublicic and the Tribune originally published their findings in a 2023 investigation that revealed that the State had spent millions of dollars on child identification kits made by a Waco -based company called National Child Identification Program. He had a history of legal and commercial problems, according to public records, and Althegh less alternatives were available for legislators, Hansmire used outdated and exaggerated statistics on Childen’s lack to help boost sales.
He also managed to develop connections with powerful Texas legislators who supported his initiatives. In 2021, Republican state senator Donna Campbell wrote a bill that created a Texas Children’s Security Program. The almost guaranteed measure any state financing would go to Hansmire’s businesses when legislators would assign money for children’s identification kits. That year, the State gave its company around $ 5.7 million for the kits.
Two years later, both the camera and the Senate propose to spend millions more on the program. But when the final budget was published, approximately one month after the investigation of the drafting rooms, the legislators had obtained the funds. They refused to answer questions about why.
The financing for the program appeared again in the budget of the House of Representatives of this year. State representative Armando Martínez, a democratic member of the Budget Committee of the Lower House, suggested to assign $ 2 million to buy the kits for students in the kindergarten until the second degree. However, the Senate did not include that financing in its version of the budget.
The writing rooms published a story in early May on the proposed expenses plan. The final version of the budget that legislators approved this week again did not have funds designated for identification kits.
Campbell, Martínez and the leaders of the Chamber Budget Committees and the Senate did not respond to the interview requests of the writing rooms for this story or written questions about why the financing did not make the final cut.
Hansmire did not respond to an interview request this week. In a previous answer, he told the writing rooms that he had solved his financial problems and said that his company’s kits have helped identify missing children, although he did not provide concrete examples. Hansmire told journalists to communicate with “any police”, specifically naming several departments. The writing room contacted several of them. Of the boxes of the agencies of application of the Texas Law that responded to the consultations, none could identify a case in which the kits helped find a fugitive or kidnapped child.
Stacey Pearson, a child security consultant who previously supervised the Louisiana Clearinghouse by a missing and exploited child, said the legislators made the right decision to eliminate the identification kits of the Bercaus test. She is still disappointed that Texas legislators continue to provide the program with any attention and hopes that they will contemplate the funds in the future.
“Every dollar and every minute, every hour you spend on a program like this, is a dollar and a minute and an hour that you cannot spend on something that is more promising or more sound,” Pearson said.
]