Hello from the State Capitol,
Is the answer to Minnesota’s fraud problem giving more authority to the people who let it thrive in the first place?
Governor Walz believes the answer is yes, as he recently unveiled a plan to centralize control over Medicaid spending inside the Department of Human Services (DHS).
This is an agency that has accosted fraud whistleblowers and backdated documents to dodge independent scrutiny. We need more independent eyes looking for fraud, not more people from within trying to cover things up.
As part of the governor’s “transformation” of human services, Managed Care Organizations would be eliminated to give recipient eligibility decisions to DHS. This decision will lead to the hiring of many more permanent state employees, which will add to Minnesotans’ tax burden as the state already faces a more than $3 billion deficit in the next budget cycle.
One area that needs to be addressed is the modernization of the technology our counties use to implement programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. The 30-to-40-year-old software is outdated, inefficient, and doing next to nothing to help identify potential fraudsters.
What is maddening is that an all Democrat-led government had an $18 billion budget surplus two years ago, and increased taxes by another $10 billion, and still refused to address this problem. We need to find a way to modernize this technology as soon as possible.
LOCAL VISITS
I had a nice visit with South Central Electric’s Jim Haler this week.
Brianna Sanders from the St. James Economic Development Authority and Kris Hohensee from Forward Worthington also stopped by.
Members of Federated Rural Electric in Jackson also made their way to St. Paul this week.
We celebrated Soil and Water Conservation District Day at the Capitol this week. Members from Cottonwood, Murray, Nobles and Pipestone counties were in attendance.
I also spoke with a teacher from Windom
and Jackson County Central schools.
Have a good weekend,
Marj