Sen. Lucero personally signing cards sent to the 87 precious newborns welcomed into the world in March to proud parents within our great community.
DEMOCRAT ARROGANCE ATTACKS THE PRESS
As the weeks and months of the current legislative session ticked by, Democrats have increasingly become arrogant and bullies in their behavior due to their Democrat majority trifecta. The Democrat arrogance is observed in the Democrats’ repeated rejection of compromise, reasonableness, and common sense proposals by Senate Republicans and the 49% of Minnesotans Senate Republicans represent. Another incident of Democrat arrogance occurred between House Democrats and the Press and was the subject of a public letter released last week by a coalition of news media organizations. I pasted the two paragraphs below from the Center of the American Experiment detailing the incident. A copy of the publicly released letter can be found at the following link here.
During a February 9, 2023 press conference on the free school lunch bill, House DFL leaders had trouble explaining to the media which students would be eligible for free lunches and how the state plan would work with current federal spending. After ten minutes of Q&A, DFL staff announced they would take only one more question. Reporter Peter Callaghan of MinnPost objected saying, “No, we can take several more questions, we’re trying to understand this bill.”
What happened next is chronicled in a remarkable letter sent to the DFL House Caucus signed by almost every media outlet. According to the letter, after the press conference, DFL communications staffer Matt Roznowski “upbraided Mr. Callaghan for his comment that the questions should continue and threatened to call his editor.” They subsequently removed Callaghan from the press list, reported him to the House human resources office for harassment and notified Capitol Security about his behavior.
AUDIT OF RentHelpMN
Thursday last week the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) released a report of an audit they conducted of Minnesota’s Covid-19 Emergency Rental Assistant Program, RentHelpMN.
The audit found the $598 million program issued millions in overpayments, was slow to process applications, and failed to verify applicant eligibility. The auditor offered a series of recommendations to correct structural problems in the program.
Democrats insist on socializing housing by creating a brand new, permanent program to pay people’s rent rather than solving the root cause responsible for driving up the cost of housing. Because RentHelpMN was poorly run, confidence has been lost in Democrats establishing new socialized housing programs. We now have clear instructions from an incorruptible source to protect against a repeat of the same wasteful mistakes. The Housing Committee needs to hold a hearing as soon as possible – before we vote on the Housing budget – to make sure the auditor’s recommendations are included in this new program.
Findings from the OLA report include:
· Roughly 15% of applications were handled incorrectly and received wrong payments. If that sample size holds true, the program would have about $90 million in errors
· Minnesota Housing self-reported $3.5 million in overpayments
· Minnesota Housing was initially slow to distribute funds
· Minnesota Housing did not establish standards for how quickly to approve applications, resulting in slow processing
· Minnesota Housing did not require proof of eligibility from landlords or renters, instead allowing them to attest to eligibility
· Minnesota Housing did not collect sufficient documentation
