The Importance of Tackling Fraud Before It Begins
By Senator Jason Rarick

Fraud has been pervasive in Minnesota for far too long. I’ve previously discussed at length the constant waste, fraud, and abuse that has plagued our state. The U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Andrew Luger, truly said it best when he said, “Minnesota has a fraud problem.” He was absolutely correct. Our waste and fraud totals are over half a billion so far under Democrat leadership, and that’s only the fraud we know of. I shudder to think of what is happening that we don’t know about. That’s why it’s so important we find ways to tackle this fraud and put safeguards in place to stop future fraud before it begins.

Because of the massive reports of fraud, Senate Republicans rolled out a comprehensive plan that would hold government accountable, and would stop the constant waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars. We’ve broken the plan into 3 parts tackling 3 different areas: providing oversight, creating transparency, and implementing grant reforms.

To promote oversight, one key thing we need to encourage is reporting fraud when the red flags are visible. That means we need to increase penalties on state employees who don’t follow the law in reporting suspected waste, fraud, and abuse. On the opposite side of that point, we also want to increase protections for whistleblowers that are state employees who report these signs. We have to encourage those that see something, to say something. These are often the people that are first to notice the red flags, and we need to empower them – that’s how we stop fraud in its tracks. Another big portion of providing oversight would be the creation of the Office of the Inspector General. This new position would report to the Legislative Auditor, giving the OLA an additional entity responsible specifically for fraud oversight in all agencies. Instead of each agency having their own Inspectors General, the oversight would be consolidated and made independent by virtue of separation. This would help in ensuring fraud oversight investigations are more independent and unbiased than they have been in the past.

When it comes to transparency, most cases of fraud are incredibly opaque, and it often feels like that’s by design so that things can be hidden. This does an incredible disservice to Minnesotans whose dollars are being wasted. One of our bills would simply promote transparency in the Attorney General’s office. There’s no reason taxpayers should not be able to access closed files regarding fraud cases. Another part of our plan encourages House and Senate committees to hold hearings where the Office of the Legislative Auditor reviews agency compliance with its previous recommendations. Too often, we see these OLA reports come out with shocking findings, and yet agencies are not held to addressing these issues – we are seeing this with the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) fraud that has been an ongoing issue since 2019. Sometimes years go by and there’s no update – we just have to take their word that they took the findings to heart. There needs to be clear follow-up.

The last part of our plan focuses on grant reforms. We saw this a lot over the past few years under the Democrat trifecta, many grants were being funded with no real oversight or financial audits – this has to change. In our plan we suggest the creation of a Grant Administrator, which would streamline the grant process and ensure there is one singular database of all grants being funded by the state. We also have a bill that would push for stricter financial audits of organizations that rely on state dollars.

There’s a reason this is a top issue for Minnesotans – they are tired of seeing their hard-earned money going to taxes, and then having that money go directly towards fraud. In every single thing we do moving forward, we have to keep the fraud in mind. We have to recognize what has happened, and we need to find ways to ensure waste and fraud of the magnitude we’ve seen never happens again.