ST. PAUL – The Minnesota Legislative Auditor recently issued a pair of reports indicating failed oversight by Gov. Tim Walz's administration led to hundreds of millions of tax dollars being lost to fraud.
On Thursday, the OLA said lax administration created opportunities for an estimated $250 million in taxpayer revenue to be the subject of fraud in the Feeding our Future program. The Minnesota Department of Education was responsible for overseeing this program including approving and verifying applicants. Instead, the Legislative Auditor found MDE’s actions and inactions opened the door to fraud.
The OLA indicated MDE "failed to act on warning signs," did not "effectively exercise its authority" and was "ill-prepared to respond to issues it encountered"
"This is not going to sit well with Minnesota taxpayers, and it shouldn't," said Rep. Jeff Dotseth, R-Silver Township. "The party in full control now has shown zero interest in protecting taxpayers with its reckless spending, needless tax increases and broken policies. But to turn a blind eye toward criminals stealing hundreds of millions in tax dollars is a whole new level of negligence. It seems like the fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars just never ends in St. Paul. We need to restore balance at the Capitol so we can put an end to this recklessness we have experienced in recent years."
The Feeding our Future report, released Thursday, came just two days after the OLA revealed it found frontline worker payments were made to people who were not eligible or whose eligibility could not be determined. This included fraudulent duplicate applications including many from people who were deceased long before this program opened. In addition, the Department of Revenue did not verify all applicants met the adjusted gross income requirements.
"This $500 million pool of frontline worker funding was approved in 2022, before I was in the Legislature, and it was supposed to go to the real heroes who worked in-person during the pandemic," Dotseth said. "Around 500,000 Minnesotans were expected to be eligible for bonus checks, but the state approved more than one million applicants. Our frontline workers who went above and beyond during the pandemic ended up receiving significantly smaller checks simply because the state failed to weed out ineligible applicants. This is inexcusable and the governor's administration needs to be held accountable for its complete mismanagement of these funds."
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