MnSpring
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More info for the DFI, FDS, UL, SOCIALIST Lovers of Harris.
"Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Used COVID Relief Money on Things That Had Nothing To Do With COVID
Walz was a "tyrant" during the pandemic who forced masks onto children as young as five, placed strict limits on even outdoor gatherings, and encouraged Minnesotans to report their neighbors for violations of social distancing rules.
Another aspect of Walz's pandemic record also deserves a closer look: how Minnesota used its share of the federal stimulus dollars distributed via the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP).
A quick review of the Treasury Department's State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) database reveals numerous line items that seem to have little or nothing to do with the pandemic.
For example, Walz oversaw the use of more than $4.3 million (across two line items) to cover parking costs at state facilities "for state employees and visitors." The state used another $1 million to fund a study into the feasibility of paid family leave, and another $1 million to fund a statewide gun safety advertising campaign. State employees in the Minnesota Department of Corrections got more than $1 million in overtime pay, thanks to the ARP stimulus bill. Another $7.8 million was distributed to two homeless shelters in the Twin Cities to cover ongoing costs.
A few other things caught my eye. There's a $929,866 line item for "small business development" to teach minority- and women-owned businesses how to qualify for state contracts. Another $1.8 million funded a grant program for the victims of crime, and $1.24 million was spent on Minnesota's "Grow Your Own" grant program, a state-run initiative that helps recruit teachers and other school employees. The Girl Scouts got $957,794 for an outreach program in low-income communities.
All those may be useful and noble projects, but it remains unclear why any of them were funded with dollars meant for pandemic recovery.
(You can dig through the SLFRF spending database here: For the purposes of this article, I looked exclusively at funds distributed in Minnesota, obviously, and set the filter to include only line items where the recipient name was the "State of Minnesota"—but you can filter by municipality too. There's a similar database available from the National Conference of State Legislatures that you might find easier to navigate.)
A few of the biggest line items should also get more scrutiny, though there is limited information available on the Treasury's site. For example, the state distributed more than $11 million to the Minnesota Zoo and nearly $3.8 million to the Science Museum of Minnesota to cover operating and maintenance costs. In some ways, that is connected to the pandemic: Fear of the disease and government social distancing mandates certainly harmed museums and zoos. The same could be said of the $237,000 line item for a "movie theater relief grant program."
But Walz should be asked why he believes federal taxpayers—who may not live in Minnesota or ever visit the state—should be on the hook to pay for that.
As Reason has reported over the past few years, the federal bailout of state and local governments after the pandemic was largely unnecessary, and many governments have struggled to find ways to use the $350 billion in free cash distributed by the ARP. A good chunk of the funds have been put to questionable use, including subsidizing money-losing, government-owned golf courses, padding the paychecks of public employees, and funding tourism promotion campaigns.
$250 million COVID-19 relief fraud scheme.
Only five have since been convicted in what has since been called the “largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the nation.”
According to a June audit by the Minnesota legislature, MDE “created opportunities for fraud” and maintained “inadequate oversight” during the roughly two-year period it was shelling out the money.
The department also “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” by Feeding Our Future.
Walz admitted to the Minnesota Reformer that he knew of the suspicious activity by the nonprofit as early as November 2020, when MDE first moved to halt the payments.
However, the governor allowed the payments to continue after Feeding Our Future sued the department, alleging racial discrimination.
Around the time of the first federal indictments in September 2022, Walz told media outlets he had tried to put a stop to the fraud in April 2021 — and blamed a Minnesota judge for ordering the funds to continue flowing.
In July 2021, Walz presented another fraudster with an “Outstanding Refugee Award” — despite her participation in the same food scheme under another nonprofit that raked in taxpayer funding.
the award was presented by no less than state Gov. Tim Walz himself, in July 2021, exactly in the middle of the free-food scam."
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