Published 5:41 pm Friday, January 3, 2025 By Minnesota Public Radio By Dana Ferguson People who attempt to rip off state dollars aimed at helping children or people with disabilities would face stiffer penalties, under a multi-pronged proposal that Gov. Tim Walz rolled out on Friday ahead of a legislative session where the issue is sure to be a focus. “Minnesotans rightly have no tolerance for misuse of taxpayer dollars.
This plan directs every single state agency to work together to better prevent, detect, investigate, and punish fraud,” Walz said in announcing the proposal. Republicans greeted the framework with skepticism. It was “too little too late” in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson of East Grand Forks.
But he and other GOP leaders said they’d work with Democrats to fashion bipartisan legislation and press them to make good on promises to fight fraud. In his second term as governor, Walz took some immediate action on his own, signing an executive order to create a centralized unit within the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate suspected fraud. Investigators from the Department of Commerce will be transferred to set up the new unit.
“By combining state law enforcement resources, we will improve our ability to root out and prosecute these crimes with consistency, transparency and efficiency,” BCA superintendent Drew Evans said. The executive order will also grant state agencies more authority to block payments set to go out to tho.
