In response to the recent report of alarming misuse of taxpayer funds by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), Senator Michael Kreun (R- Blaine) criticized MDE for its failure to protect taxpayers.  

“Minnesotans have been stunned already at the scale of fraud in the Feeding Our Future case working through the federal court system, but today’s report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor is an appalling outline of the complete failure to prevent or stop the fraud while it was happening,” Kreun said.  

The Office of the Legislative Auditor’s report detailed the numerous ways in which MDE missed opportunities to stop Feeding Our Future from engaging in fraudulent actions. In fact, despite ongoing application concerns and non-compliance with program requirements dating to 2018, MDE repeatedly approved Feeding our Future’s applications and continued to allow their full participation in nutrition programs.  

“The Department of Education had the opportunity and the means to prevent this fraud from even taking place and didn’t act. It is because of their actions, fraudsters were able to fleece the taxpayers and prevent dollars from reaching children who needed access to food services during the pandemic,” Kreun concluded. 

The OLA report had three main themes: 

• MDE failed to act on warning signs known to the department prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the start of the alleged fraud  
• MDE did not effectively exercise its authority to hold Feeding Our Future accountable to program requirements
• MDE was ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered with Feeding Our Future