Lawmakers and officials in Minnesota say Tim Walz failed to hold his administrator accountable for pandemic fraud schemes

Minnesota lawmakers and officials criticized Gov. Tim Walz for failing to hold his administration accountable for “massive” fraud schemes related to pandemic-era relief programs, saying the responsibility falls “squarely on his shoulders.”

“If he doesn't hold commissioners accountable, then Governor Walz is responsible for the fraud that took place in the state of Minnesota,” Lisa Demuth, chairwoman of the House Republican Party, told CNN. “It falls right on his shoulders.”

In 2022, Minnesota's Office of the Legislative Auditor opened a series of investigations into allegations of fraud related to the state's pandemic funding. One audit found that bonus checks intended for frontline workers were given to unqualified recipients, while another audit highlighted the administration's failure to monitor Feeding Our Future, a program designed to feed needy children. Prosecutors said this oversight resulted in a “solid“Fraud plan. The Walz administration has repeatedly downplayed or ignored the allegations, the state's nonpartisan auditor, Judy Randall, told CNN.

Randall added that Walz failed to hold anyone accountable because he did not fire anyone in his administration connected to her office's investigation.

Randall said the state's response to the Feeding Our Future investigation has been angry and dismissive, a tone that GOP critics say was due to Walz's own “hostility.”

“The governor's appointees in nearly every agency have been hostile and uncooperative when citizens demand transparency and oversight from the legislative auditor,” state Senator Mark Koran, the Republican vice chairman of the state's nonpartisan Legislative Audit Commission, told CNN. “The hostility is led by Governor Walz.”

“The money is still running down the street and stopping nowhere, and that is unacceptable,” Democratic state Sen. Ann Rest said at a hearing earlier this summer about the state’s response to the fraud case.

Blois Olson, a longtime political analyst in Minnesota, said fraud has become a “trend” in the Walz administration.

“A case is not new to a state, to any state,” he said. “Multiple instances in the same administration of fraud in public programs is becoming a trend or culture that the legislative auditor believes is not right and that we must change.”