The Office of the Legislative Auditor released a scathing audit of the grant making process at yet another Minnesota Human Services program, the Behavioral Health Administration (BHA). BHA is supposed to administer grants to provide prevention, treatment, and recovery services for individuals with mental health conditions or substance use disorders. They receive around $200 million of your tax money every year for this purpose. Auditors found nothing but problems with the way BHA was handing out the money. In fact, they told a legislative committee Tuesday that BHA “did not comply with most requirements we tested.”
Beyond the structural problems with their grant making process, two bombshell revelations came out in the audit.
First, an employee of BHA approved a grant for $672,647.78 to a grantee and then immediately started working for them after approving the payment! From the audit:
The BHA grant manager who approved the $672,647.78 payment left DHS a few days after approving it and later started to provide consulting services to the grantee. We asked BHA management whether they questioned such a large reimbursement request for just one month of work. BHA management said that due to limited information in the grant
Second, the auditor said BHA staff were manipulating documentation during the audit, even backdating forms to fool the auditors!
This is a prime example of the culture problem in Minnesota state agencies identified before by Legislative Auditor Judy Randall. The employees are predisposed to hand out the money without considering proper financial controls. Tim Walz hasn’t shown the strength to change the culture in the state bureaucracy because most of the employees belong to a public employee union. And the public employee unions are some of the largest contributors to Democratic election campaigns.
The end of every legislative audit includes a letter from the agency describing how they will implement the auditor’s recommendations. In BHA’s 16-page response, they did not say any employees would be fired or even disciplined. More training was the answer to almost every recommendation.
Governor Walz claimed recently that his administration has fired people for fraud and mismanagement. While there is no evidence of that happening, the BHA audit gives him a good chance to prove he’s not lying.
