The Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) issued a 120-page report Thursday which lambasted the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) for failing to take necessary oversight measures, enabling the multi-million dollar Feeding Our Future fraud to occur.
In the report, Legislative Auditor Judy Randall declared, “Federal regulations required MDE to monitor and enforce Feeding Our Future’s compliance with program requirements. MDE’s responsibilities under federal law ranged from providing guidance and training to Feeding Our Future staff, to terminating the organization’s participation in the programs if warranted. However, we found MDE’s oversight of Feeding Our Future to be inadequate. In fact, we believe MDE’s actions and inactions created opportunities for fraud.”
Among its general findings, the OLA found that 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,” and “did not effectively exercise its authority to hold Feeding Our Future accountable to program requirements.” Additionally, the OLA concluded that MDE “was ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered with Feeding Our Future.”
MDE had a responsibility for “conducting regular oversight of sponsors participating in CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program) and SFSP (Summer Food Service Program). Two key oversight activities include (1) reviewing and approving annual sponsor applications, and (2) conducting monitoring visits and compliance reviews, called ‘administrative reviews.’”
The OLA found that MDE was derelict in its responsibility in various ways. “MDE did not always take steps to verify statements made by Feeding Our Future prior to approving its program applications,” the report says. “MDE approved Feeding Our Future’s program applications despite unaddressed concerns.” Furthermore, “MDE’s only administrative review of Feeding Our Future’s CACFP operations — conducted in 2018 — resulted in serious findings that required follow-up, but MDE never conducted a follow-up review.”
The OLA said it “identified numerous instances when MDE did not provide adequate oversight, especially given information it either had in its possession or should have obtained but did not.”
Across a three-year period, roughly 30 complaints were sent to MDE which related to either Feeding Our Future or its food sites. State law requires that government agencies and departments promptly investigate complaint claims regarding the federal nutrition programs. However, MDE decided to either not investigate these complaints entirely or investigate them in an inadequate manner, the report says.
In some cases, MDE shockingly “asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself.”
Education Commissioner Willie Jett at hearing on new Feeding Our Future report: "To say we need to come here and place blame or highlight who misstepped, that's not right." pic.twitter.com/tAzHW2vOYC
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) June 13, 2024
The report also outlines how MDE continually approved Feeding Our Future applications even though MDE identified “serious concerns” about the nonprofit’s administration of the nutrition programs. Additionally, the OLA report describes how MDE failed to properly verify information Feeding Our Future submitted to MDE.
Describing the situation, the OLA report said “MDE did not effectively exercise its authority to hold Feeding Our Future accountable to program requirements.”
The OLA report also found that MDE’s failure to hold Feeding Our Future accountable was not due to the agency’s lack of authority. In fact, the OLA report said “MDE had the authority — and the obligation — to take each of these steps, regardless of any lack of detail in law or USDA guidance, and regardless of a threat of litigation or negative press.”
Education Commissioner Willie Jett, a member of Gov. Tim Walz’s cabinet, disputed the report’s “characterization regarding the adequacy of MDE’s oversight.”
“What happened with Feeding Our Future was a travesty — a coordinated, brazen abuse of nutrition programs that exist to ensure access to healthy meals for low-income children. The responsibility for this flagrant fraud lies with the indicted and convicted fraudsters,” he said.
Prominent Minnesota officials expressed their dismay with the findings, along with MDE’s conduct. Minnesota House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, opined that the oversight failure “is government malpractice, and the administration needs to be held accountable for the millions that they’ve given away to fraudsters.”
“Once again, we see that Democrat officials simply do not care enough to stop fraud from occurring right under their noses. Republicans have sounded the alarm on this for years. It is long past time to stop trusting Democrats to spend tax dollars wisely,” Demuth added.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer joined Reps. Virginia Foxx, James Comer, Glenn Thompson, and the Minnesota Republican delegation in drafting a letter which called for “additional information as we continue our oversight of the USDA’s and the Minnesota Department of Education’s (MDE) administration of the [Federal Child Nutrition Program] and oversight of FOF,” including, but not limited to, internal and external communications from MDE as well as documents related to sponsor organizations, food distribution sites, and those provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Referred to by the representatives as the “largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the nation,” 70 Minnesotans have been indicted for participating in a scheme which defrauded the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child Nutrition Program of $250 million. Eighteen of these have pleaded guilty, while five of seven defendants in the first trial were found guilty of most charges.
The full report and the Department of Education’s response can be read here.
Luke Sprinkel contributed to this report.
Evan Poellinger
Evan Poellinger, the Alpha News Summer 2024 Journalism Fellow, is a native Minnesotan with a lifelong passion for history and politics. He previously worked as a journalism intern with the American Spectator and an investigative journalism fellow with the Media Research Center. He is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross with degrees in political science and history.
