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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
It's been another busy week at the Capitol! As we continue to prepare for the 2025 Legislative Session, more news is breaking every day that makes our objectives next year even more clear than they were before.
First, I'm proud to announce that along with being selected as the GOP Chair of the State Government Committee, I've also been placed on the following committees:
- Housing Finance and Policy
- Ways and Means
I'm excited to serve the People of Minnesota on these committees and will use my position to help cut down on cases of waste, fraud, and abuse like we saw this week.
Yesterday it came out that the FBI began raiding several autism centers around our state, seemingly in a continuation of their investigation into more allegations of Medicaid fraud. Reporter Deena Winter first reported on this back in June.
Over the past few years, the number of autism centers in Minnesota has increased by 700% while funding to those centers increased by a whopping 3,000%, from $6 million to $192 million. In response to that June article, despite these massive increases, an assistant commissioner of the Department of Human Services called the 3000% increase in funding “pretty consistent” with other government programs, and continued by saying “I don’t think we are surprised or particularly disturbed by the rate of growth,”
If there truly is as much fraud occurring as the FBI thinks, this scandal could rival the infamous Feeding Our Future scandal which saw $250 million taxpayer dollars intended to feed hungry kids stolen.
It seems like a new instance of fraud is discovered every day in Minnesota. As the GOP Chair of the State Government committee, it's a top priority of mine to increase accountability in our state agencies and stop the fraud. It's time to start respecting taxpayer dollars again.
This week we also saw a report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor that detailed a concerning lack of internal controls at the same state agency, the Department of Human Services. The report, available here, concluded that "The Department of Human Services did not comply with the significant finance-related legal requirements we tested and generally had inadequate internal controls. The more significant instances of noncompliance and internal control weakness were in the areas of recovering outstanding provider debt and accurately reporting the accounts receivable amount on the state’s financial statements."
DHS has not adequately reported its accounts receivable since 2019 and has failed to recover more than $40 million in "recoverable provider debt."
Simply put, this all points to a shocking lack of accountability and leadership in Governor Walz's state agencies. It seems like State of Minnesota is losing and mismanaging taxpayer dollars every single day. As stated above, eliminating this fraud is a top priority of mine, and of the whole MN House GOP, in the 2025 Legislative Session.
Please Contact Me
Please feel free to reach out to my office if there is any way I can be of assistance. My phone number is 651-296-4282, I am here to serve you!
Have a great weekend!
Jim
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