Corruption and waste

Do you know where your tax dollars are?

It’s a sorry state of affairs when Minnesota — long the gold standard of forthright Midwest values and decency — is now in a race to the bottom regarding the corruption of our politicians and lack of accountability in the face of repeated scandals and waste. Last year, former U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said that “Minnesota has a fraud problem.” That has turned out to be the understatement of the century. The Democrat trifecta, where Gov. Tim Walz and legislative Democrats run everything, has created an entire industry of fraud, graft, and corruption, costing the state an estimated $610 million and counting. 

The grift began during COVID-19 when Pres. Joe Biden sent Walz and other governors trillions of dollars. Walz gave millions of dollars to fly-by-night operators who claimed to feed thousands of children during the pandemic. This gave Minnesota the unpleasant (to say the least) honor of being home to one of the largest — perhaps the largest — COVID funding fraud in the nation (the Feeding Our Future scandal) to the tune of $250 million in taxpayer money used to buy luxury cars, travel, boats, and a $500,000 home in Kenya, among many other lavish purchases. In fact, Aimee Bock, the ringleader of the operation, was recently convicted of personally benefiting from $1.9 million in stolen funds.  

How far does this go? It’s difficult to say, but as of this writing, there have been 37 guilty pleas and 44 convictions. That’s not even counting the witness tampering and bribery (involving a bag of cash given to one of the jurors) that occurred during the trial! Yet for all the investigations and prosecutions, it is almost guaranteed that Minnesotans will never get back the money they were fleeced out of by crooks purporting to feed hungry kids during a national crisis.  

As the scandal unraveled in 2021, it became clear that the state had not conducted proper oversight of the funds distributed to organizations like Feeding Our Future, despite warnings having been raised about possible mismanagement and fraud. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), which was tasked with overseeing the program, failed to investigate red flags that emerged as early as 2020, despite being alerted to discrepancies by whistleblowers and auditors. Furthermore, Walz’s administration, supposedly focused on the rapid distribution of pandemic relief, failed to establish sufficient safeguards to prevent fraud on such a large scale.  

Walz’s office also failed to provide adequate transparency during the investigations that followed the exposure of the scandal. To highlight his complete lack of leadership and notions of accountability or responsibility — an emerging theme of his time as governor — Walz did not take the lead in addressing the fraud or in making changes to the state’s oversight procedures. As the investigation into Feeding Our Future progressed, it became apparent that much of the focus was on the individuals involved in the fraudulent schemes, rather than on improving the state’s systems to prevent future abuses of power. If no one is interested in how the gravy train runs, how can we expect it to stop? This gross disinterestedness by Walz and his administration does nothing to restore public trust in the state’s ability to manage public resources effectively — if at all. Not only did Walz and the Democrats (who controlled the executive branch and both houses of the legislature) show no interest in investigating the fraud, in 2022 they doubled down by spending a $17 billion surplus, adding $11 million in tax increases, and increasing state funding by a whopping 38 percent. Unsurprisingly, this reckless spending has created even more fraud. In recent months, we’ve learned that there has been an additional $360-plus million in daycare, autism, Medicaid, and unemployment programs (among others). On our website, readers of Thinking Minnesota can see the running list of fraud schemes and their correlated dollars in our Scandal Tracker (AmericanExperiment.org/ minnesota-scandal-tracker-2024/). 

What is the Walz administration’s answer to this embarrassing scene — the record-breaking organized crime stealing spree that happened under his watch? He signed an executive order creating a centralized state fraud investigations unit under the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The State House also established a Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy committee. To me, Walz holding a press conference to announce his newfound intolerance of fraud and investigations into abuse is akin to the fox announcing his incredulity at attacks on innocent hens. It’s beyond parody. 

Fortunately, Rep. Kristin Robbins (R- Maple Grove) has taken the lead where Walz and his fellow Democrats have failed. In a press conference announcing her new role as chair of the House Oversight committee investigating government fraud and abuse, she says, “We need to have legislative oversight of agencies in the executive branch,” and as I said earlier, likened Walz’s proposal to the “fox guarding the henhouse.” Minnesotans can no longer afford to let Walz and the Democrats run the show or our pocketbooks.  

To highlight how unserious Democrats are in their fraud “investigations,” American Experiment policy fellow Bill Glahn was invited to speak about fraud in state benefit programs. Rather than act in a good-faith manner and be interested in trying to reform a system badly in need of an overhaul and proper oversight, the committee’s lead Democrat, Rep. Dave Pinto (DFL-St. Paul), resorted to ad hominem attacks and unfounded accusations against American Experiment. In his post-committee press release he states, “The Center of the American Experiment is a cornerstone of Minnesota’s right-wing propaganda machine.” These are people afraid of confronting the real facts, the only ones that matter in an investigation where criminals were swimming in millions of dollars of stolen taxpayer money. It speaks volumes that the DFL in this state refuses to cooperate in protecting the people of Minnesota and their hard-earned money.  

The Feeding Our Future scheme is far and away the single biggest case of corruption of Minnesota’s social safety net and state welfare programs. But it isn’t the only case, nor does it minimize the other instances of abuse, fraud, and waste that are running rampant through our state. In fact, as Rep. Robbins explained in another hearing, fraud appears to have become a business model for many. Groups are targeting vulnerable populations, signing them up for services that they don’t deliver (or do so in a minimal manner), receiving state money, and then reporting that the problem hasn’t been solved. The cycle repeats, with the state and vulnerable people being the dupes in the scheme. 

Walz’s administration, in particular, must take responsibility for these failures. As the chief executive officer of the state, Walz bears the ultimate responsibility for the actions of the state agencies under his purview, including MDE. Even worse, his failure to act decisively might be explained by increasing evidence that individuals with cozy connections to the Minnesota Democrats are at the heart of these scams. News reports show that indicted personnel donated to the Minnesota House Caucus, Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison, Sen. Omar Fateh, and a Democrat Minnesota State Senate candidate. The combination of the fraud business model plus tight Democrat connections could easily explain the lack of inaction by Walz and legislative Democrats.  

What’s to be done? Increased transparency, regular auditing, and oversight are a start. American Experiment has repeatedly called for these steps to be taken, all while we have been tracking and highlighting the estimated hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars involved in these schemes. I’m afraid, though, that the ongoing relationship between fraudsters and the Democrats will continue, and that only new leadership in the state will bring about the needed housecleaning.