Joe Soucheray: Too much generosity in Minnesota? No, too little accountability

Yahoo

08-02-2025

Maxed out on Netflix, eyeballed by shopkeepers, perhaps even ignored by neighbors, Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislators in the Minnesota House finally returned to work. Or maybe they were embarrassed to keep collecting paychecks while they remodeled the rec room. There really was no precedent for their obstinance, which they attempted to explain under the rubric of power sharing.
They didn't have any, power sharing that is, and it might as well have mummified the lot of them. Well, they cheated in one election and in another were afraid the Republicans would not seat DFL Rep. Brad Tabke in District 54A, who, a judge decided, lawfully defeated Republican Aaron Paul by 14 votes in a race where 20 ballots went missing. Paul sued.
Now, Tabke has been seated — the Republicans wisely did not challenge the judge — and committees will be shared, with Lisa Demuth, a Republican, holding the gavel as speaker of the House.
On March 11, a special election will be held in House District 40B, where DFLer Curtis Johnson defeated Republican Paul Wikstrom in November. Johnson was found to have not lived in the district. Wikstrom will face Democrat David Gottfried.
Now that the debris has been swept up, where are we? We are at 67-66 in favor of the Republicans, at least until March 11, but the 'power sharing' has been constructed, Demuth is the speaker and the rubber is about to meet the road in one of the most crucial legislative sessions in history.
We are being robbed blind.
Fraud in this state must be found, exposed and destroyed. Bill Glahn's Center of the American Experiment Scandal Tracker has the fraud total now above $610 million. The Capitol leaks money, feeding fake children, fake autism centers, fake day care centers, fake loophole-loving addiction treatment centers, fake Medicaid payments.
The Tim Walz years are distinguished by incredible fraud, $610 million so far. Jay Kolls of KSTP-TV has just uncovered the years-long day care fraud, with tens of millions of dollars sent to day care centers with lists of egregious infractions that should have disqualified them from being in business, much less getting paid, or seemingly vacant buildings that hadn't seen a kid in, oh, maybe never.
The Legislature must stop this. Now. This session. Gov. Walz is incapable. He has been so lax that he tries to get away with his bumpkin act when confronted – 'Well, I guess we just have a culture that is maybe too generous.'
No, we have a culture of no accountability. Walz, your own legislative auditor warned you about virtually nonexistent oversight. Your commissioners come and go with no explanation, no responsibility for the miserable failures at the departments of Education and Human Services.
Walz, could you at least be humbled by the number, $610 million and counting?
It's a disgrace, a national disgrace. And this guy lapped up the idea that he was vice presidential material, a just-a-heartbeat-away kind of a guy. As Sal Bando once said of his Oakland A's manager Alvin Dark, 'You couldn't manage a meat market.' Many of us have been saying this used to be a hell of a state. And it was. We were governed competently and honestly. We are a long way from Aug. 13, 1973, the date of the Time Magazine cover photo of Gov. Wendy Anderson holding up a northern pike with the caption 'The Good Life in Minnesota.'
If we are to return to the good life, the Legislature is going to have to turn over every rock and seal every nook and cranny where the money keeps slipping out.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at [e-mail]. Soucheray's 'Garage Logic' podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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