Minnesota human services officials skip fraud hearing as Walz promises reform

Minnesota Department of Human Services (MNDHS) officials skipped a key hearing this week held by a state House fraud prevention panel, earning the ire of its chairwoman as Gov. Tim Walz separately promised reform.

MNDHS was expected to face tough questions at the hearing, which featured a former judge and Catholic diocesan official appointed by Walz to investigate “program integrity” in the state.

“I’m incredibly frustrated that they ghosted us,” House Fraud Prevention Committee Chair Kristin Robbins said, as she has since sent a letter to the department demanding answers.

Robbins, a suburban Minneapolis Republican who is also running for governor, previously said state leaders “knew this was going on and they allowed it to continue.”

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At the top of Monday’s hearing, Robbins verbally recognized the absence of MNDHS, as she introduced the session as one “discussing the roadmap to program integrity and fraud prevention, followed by an informational hearing and discussion of periodic data matching.”

“Before we begin, is there anyone in the Department of Human Services in the audience? I don’t see anyone,” she said. “So I just want to note for the record that [MN]DHS was invited to be available in the audience to answer questions today after Judge O’Malley’s presentation. And they have apparently declined to come, which is very frustrating.”

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Robbins said it was the second such hearing that MNDHS ignored, and that she would be contacting MNDHS Commissioner Shireen Gandhi.

“She may not always be able to attend, but there are a lot of employees at that agency [including] someone who especially can speak to periodic data matching should have been here for that portion of the hearing.”

Instead, Robbins moved on to testimony from Tim O’Malley, a retired judge and St. Paul archdiocesan official, who was recently appointed by Walz as state director of Program Integrity.

“Minnesota has experienced extensive, well-documented fraud in programs designed to serve the state’s most vulnerable residents. The state’s ineffectiveness in combating that fraud has wasted taxpayer dollars, enriched criminals, eroded public confidence, and impeded the delivery of essential services to Minnesotans in need,” O’Malley said.

In a video interview with Fox News Digital, Robbins expounded on her earlier reported comments, saying it was “very disappointing” to see MNDHS no-show.

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“What was more shocking is, as we gaveled out, the next hearing was coming in, a Ways and Means Committee hearing, and all the [MN]DHS people walked in the door for the next hearing because they wanted to ask for money from the state … but they couldn’t bother to show up to react to the governor’s own program integrity report. It was unbelievable,” she said.

When reached for comment, an MNDHS spokesperson said “the department had a prior commitment Monday morning.”

“Monday marked the 19th hearing of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee since it began in February 2025. The Minnesota Department of Human Services has testified before the committee eight times. This was the second time the department was unavailable to attend at the chair’s request,” the spokesperson said, adding that the agency supports O’Malley’s work.

Asked about MNDHS’ response to the no-show, Robbins said “it’s not true” and said that when she left the hearing at its end, she ran into MNDHS staff coming in to testify at an ensuing hearing.

“[Ours] wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill hearing. It was the public hearing on the governor’s program integrity report with the guy the governor appointed: Judge O’Malley. So, absolutely, they should have been there to ask questions.”

Walz said during a press availability broadcast Tuesday that he and O’Malley are working to root out decades of institutional issues that he likened to a “Frankenstein” monster that saw additional “bolts” being soldered on it and complicating its structure instead of it being fixed.

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“When I came here, the discussion was, if you recall clear back in 2019, that reforms around [MN]DHS as a large organization that does multiple things that we needed to think about modernizing… I talked to my fellow governors and we talked to commissioners in other states, Minnesota system of delivery around social services is a bit of an outlier in how it’s done,” Walz said.

The “topline” he said, will be to “moderniz[e] a proposal on how Medicaid is administered … Strengthening oversight of enrollment in these programs by centralizing eligibility decisions, and funding a comprehensive study to examine the role of state, counties, and tribal nations in the delivery of these to provide more transparency and effectiveness.”

Walz underlined he was not blaming counties for issues in attempting to restructure the system to a more state-centralized one.

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The governor did not respond directly to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Mike Tobin and Elise Oggioni con