Hello from St. Paul,
This week Minnesota House Republicans sent a formal request to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a thorough investigation into the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse that is occurring throughout Governor Walz’s administration. At a minimum, Minnesota’s taxpayers have lost more than $610 million to fraudsters during Walz’s tenure, and some have suggested the total actually exceeds $1 billion.
Local media sources found two new instances of significant fraud just last month. It’s clear we have a major fraud problem in this state, yet Governor Walz, as he has for the past several years, continues to sit on his hands.
House Republicans take this fraud issue very seriously. We have created a new House committee that will bring more cases to light and will hold fraudsters accountable. But it’s worth remembering that the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor released numerous reports detailing agency oversight failures, and legislative Democrats refused to hold a single hearing on the issue in six years.
State leadership has ignored this dilemma, which is why we are calling on the DOJ to step in. Fraud is running rampant in this state, and we believe a prompt and comprehensive federal response is necessary.
Speaking of the newly created House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, it held its first hearing Monday. The committee’s first hearing focused on the oversight of taxpayer-funded grants to nonprofit organizations as was detailed in its 2023 OLA report Oversight of State-Funded Grants to Nonprofit Organizations.
Why is nonprofit oversight needed? In just a five-year period that the report covered, $2.6 billion dollars of taxpayer funds were distributed to approximately 2500 different nonprofits across 27 state agencies. 25% of the nonprofits received grants from more than one state agency and the committee learned that the agencies do not communicate with each other about grantees. During their testimony, OLA representatives also noted they found “pervasive noncompliance” with policies that are meant to stop fraud within state government.
I’m certain this committee is going to discover more head scratching, if not outrageous findings as session moves ahead.
COMMITTEE WORK IN FULL SWING
With the Democrat shutdown now in the rearview mirror, the Minnesota House completed its first full week of legislative activity.
In the committee in which I chair, Judiciary Finance and Civil Law, we received presentations from the Board of Judicial Standards and the Department of Human Rights.
We also debated a bill that addresses the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Due to a recent Minnesota Supreme Court ruling, much of the data produced by the AG’s office would now be not public data. This overturns 40 years of public access to massive amounts of data produced by the Minnesota Attorney General. The ruling was reached by twisting a long-held interpretation of current law.
This means the public is unable to find out what the agency is investigating, what topics it is choosing to avoid, and what findings are being ignored, among other things. If ever there was an agency where transparency should be paramount, it would be the Attorney General’s Office. Hopefully this issue will be rectified soon.