Walz halts payments to HSS providers

From the Minnesota Star Tribune this evening (Monday):

Minnesota halts payments to housing program providers amid fraud investigation.

The Star Tribune quotes the governor:

The payments that were scheduled to go today are not going out to them. I fully expect some of those folks will sue the state of Minnesota.

He’s correct about the lawsuits. Fraudsters are a litigious lot. Walz and his Dept. of Human Services (DHS), for once, have taken sweeping action:

Walz said the state halted payments Monday to “most of the people involved in this program,” including about 50 of the largest providers.

As you will recall, in an interview last week with Jay Kolls of KSTP, Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson said that the vast majority of the money spent on the program in question, Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) went to fraud. The HSS fraud is one of many frauds being tracked by Thompson’s office, with total losses to taxpayers across all programs going above $1 billion.

I applaud the actions by Walz and DHS. But they should go much further and shut down HSS entirely and permanently.

The Star Tribune again describes the HSS program as suffering from “bad design.” From what I can tell about the program, even if operating perfectly, it doesn’t produce any useful product or results for program clients or taxpayers. All provided on a $100 million per year budget.

Shut it down!

The fraudsters themselves are already moving on to the next vulnerable welfare program to target. DHS and other state agencies should get proactive and head them off at the pass.