My first two thoughts when I saw this report: Who’d a thunk it? Why is CNN suddenly throwing Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz under the bus?
We’re talking way under the bus.
The “CNN Investigates” report blisters Walz from beginning to end, starting with the headline: “As fraud scandals erupt in Minnesota on Gov. Tim Walz’s watch, accountability is in short supply.”
Beginning with a damning state audit, CNN reported (emphasis, mine):
One state audit found that bonus checks intended for frontline workers during the pandemic were handed out to undeserving recipients. Another criticized a Minnesota state agency for failing to ensure there were no conflicts of interest in taxpayer-funded mental health and addiction programs. A third detailed lax oversight of a program to feed needy kids which federal prosecutors say resulted in the nation’s largest Covid-era fraud scheme.
Moreover, Minnesota’s nonpartisan auditor, Judy Randall, told CNN that some state agencies working under Walz’s administration, when confronted with “these and other troubling examples of waste, fraud, and abuse,” repeatedly minimized or dismissed the allegations. How “Tim Walz” of them.
Predictably, CNN found that Walz has been a “hands-off leader when it comes to seeking accountability for episodes of fraud and mismanagement on his watch.”
Randall, who has worked in the office for 26 years, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that the responses to her audits from some agencies have had a “shoot the messenger” feeling. How “Democrat” of them.
I have seen increasing rejection of our findings and recommendations. Or denial or dismissiveness or excuses. There’s definitely a shoot-the-messenger feeling.
Asked about the audits in July, Walz said:
There’s folks, they will try and move one step ahead of us, they will continue to try and commit crimes. In many of these cases, and Feeding Our Future is one of those, people are going to prison, and that’s where they need to go. And then we can continue to strengthen our protections.
Memo to Tim Walz: There are always “folks” who will “try and move one step ahead of us,” Governor, which is precisely why strong leadership and accountability are critical.
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CNN reviewed more than a dozen reports from Randall’s office that held specific agencies responsible for allowing fraud, waste, or mismanagement on their watch during Walz’s governorship. It wasn’t pretty:
Some addressed high-profile scandals such as the pandemic fraud allegations and a troubled light-rail project – whose genesis predates Walz but is currently monitored by 17 Walz appointees – that has suffered from more than $1.5 billion in cost overruns.
Randall’s office faulted that agency last year for a lack of transparency about rising costs and failure to ensure contractors’ ballooning price tags were justified.
Others found holes in safeguards to waste or raised more targeted conflict-of-interest concerns, such as a state Department of Public Safety employee who received payments from the recipient of a grant that the employee oversees.
And have any of Walz’s appointees been held accountable? Randall told CNN that she knows of no personnel changes linked to any audit by her office since Walz was sworn into office in 2019.
As I was writing this article, I smiled to myself as I thought that if Harris was looking for a vice presidential running mate who could be expected to do a worse job than she has done for more than three-and-a-half years, she found her man.
It Gets Worse
State Republican Sen. Mark Koran, who serves as the vice chair of the state’s bipartisan legislative audit commission, went bottom-line.
The governor’s appointees across the board at almost all agencies have been hostile and uncooperative when citizens are seeking transparency and oversight through the legislative auditor. The hostility is led by Governor Walz.
Wait. You mean that lovable everyday guy with a folksy persona who called himself a “knucklehead” while fumbling (lying about) the debate question about why he’s claimed, multiple times, that he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China can actually be hostile when questioned about lack of accountability when cameras and microphones aren’t present? Why I never.
Meanwhile, speaking of lack of accountability, there’s Kamala Harris.
