Gov. Walz makes proposal to prevent the next Feeding Our Future scandal

Mostly, the idea is to hire more bureaucrats.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of the Feeding Our Future scandal, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has proposed a package of measures.

Of course, Walz’ press release doesn’t mention the words “Feeding Our Future.” It speaks of “fraud” and the need to “protect taxpayer dollars.”

But his headline item is to create an Inspector General position within the Department of Education, the state agency whose failure to oversee Feeding Our Future, and related nonprofits, gave rise to the scandal.

The other four items all involve hiring more bureaucrats to existing state efforts at the Departments of Administration, Management and Budget, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and six other state agencies.

Most of these efforts could have been implemented at any point in the past three years of the scandal.

That so many different state agencies are involved points to part of the problem: too many cooks, too many fiefdoms, and no central location where the buck stops.

On Twitter I made four proposals to prevent fraud. Had these been followed at the time, the entire scandal would have been avoided:

If you are interested in the origins of the Feeding Our Future scandal, I did this 20-minute video over the summer.