Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) was a no-show at a Minnesota House oversight hearing on Tuesday about how his administration is actively combating fraud in the state’s taxpayer-funded childcare services, notably declining to testify on the same day that the FBI raided nearly two dozen facilities in Minneapolis, including daycares, suspected of stealing federal public assistance funds.
Lawmakers on the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee noted that they reached out to Walz more than a month ago, followed up multiple times, and that he had his “pick of dates” to choose from.
“This is incredibly frustrating,” said Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins, the committee’s GOP chairwoman. “The governor’s decision-making over the last seven years since the first [Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor] reports on [state Child Care Assistance Program] fraud came out in March and April of 2019 — early in his administration — should be addressed by the governor before our committee.”
The fraud prevention committee convened anyway on Tuesday afternoon to discuss fraud in Minnesota’s federally subsidized Child Care Assistance Programs, following the 22 service providers operating out of Minneapolis who were searched that morning as part of a sweeping federal fraud investigation.
Officials say that purported autism support sites and Somali-owned daycares, including the infamously misspelled “Quality Learing Center” identified by blogger Nick Shirley in a viral video late last year, were among the bogus businesses targeted.
“Understanding how this happened is critical so we get a handle on it,” Robbins said. “As we see in the news today, this is not over. This has not been stopped. This has been going on for years, and we still have not finished the job.”
Committee members said that following weeks of no response from the governor’s office regarding whether he would attend, Walz formally declined the committee’s invitation on the eve of the oversight hearing, despite reportedly being at the Minnesota state Capitol building all day Tuesday.
“I know he’s available today,” Robbins said at Tuesday’s committee meeting. “He’s probably in the basement or somewhere in this building because tonight is the State of the State Address.”
Walz is scheduled to deliver his eighth and final State of the State Address to the Minnesota legislature on Tuesday evening. The remarks are considered a quasi-farewell speech from Walz, who withdrew his bid for a third term amid mounting scrutiny over how he handled the state’s fraud crisis.
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“So he’s not on Jimmy Kimmel,” Robbins said. “He’s not in Spain at a global mobilization conference. He is somewhere here in this building declining to join us.”
Walz previously claimed that Republican lawmakers were conspiring in the basement of the Minnesota state Capitol to oust him instead of working on important legislation before the session ends in May.
“I would just encourage those legislators to maybe get out of the basement of the Capitol, where they’re putting on a little play,” Walz said at an earlier April event in response to an impeachment resolution introduced against him.
The resolution, sponsored by state House Republicans, accused Walz of “knowingly concealing or permitting others to conceal widespread fraud within Minnesota state-administered programs despite repeated warnings, audits, reports, and public indicators of systematic abuse.”
“Talk about a waste of time,” Walz said of the impeachment effort. “I’m gone in eight months. Just get over it and move on and do some work for your constituents that you were elected to do.”
Walz claimed credit for Tuesday’s raids, saying that they were only carried out thanks to referrals from state oversight officials.
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“Today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it,” Walz wrote on X. “That’s how the system is supposed to work, and our agencies will keep at it as long as there are fraudsters around to put behind bars.”
FBI Director Kash Patel called out Walz for attributing the raids to state anti-fraud enforcement efforts.
“Come again?” Patel fired back in a social media statement. “This FBI and DOJ with our DHS partners drafted and executed every search warrant today. But go ahead and take credit for our work while we smoke out the fraud plaguing Minnesota under your governorship.”
The Washington Examiner contacted Walz’s office for comment.