Description:

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel spent more than a year investigating the $350 million taxpayer-financed child-care system known as Wisconsin Shares and uncovered a trail of phony companies, fake reports and shoddy oversight.

Journal Sentinel reporter Raquel Rutledge won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for her "Cashing in on Kids" investigation. The judges commended "her penetrating reports on the fraud and abuse in a child-care program for low-wage working parents that fleeced taxpayers and imperiled children, resulting in a state and federal crackdown on providers."