Olson: Minnesota Republicans’ waste, fraud and abuse committee gets stuck in the mud

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The Fraud Prevention and Oversight Committee is the only Minnesota House panel chaired solely by a Republican under the power-sharing pact in the evenly divided Minnesota House of Representatives.

At the outset of the 2025 legislative session, state Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, was tapped to lead the panel, a prominent perch from which to launch her lofty statewide ambitions.

“Waste, fraud and abuse” is an oft-repeated cudgel against Democrats for Republicans seeking to vault into electoral prominence. It’s not bad. It’s punchy and easy enough to remember. Minnesota’s pandemic-era Feeding Our Future fraud poured rocket fuel into the GOP vessel and helped birth this oversight committee.

Republicans hoping to hop the fraud train into a cohesive theme, however, have encountered sand in the gas tank. Pithy slogans and angry news conferences are so much easier than actual oversight and governance.

This committee has barely launched. Robbins blamed the Democrats for failing to show up to work in January and February. She also blamed federal holidays for falling on Mondays, the committee’s usual weekly meeting day.

When the committee convened at the Capitol on Tuesday, it was a chance to get back to showcasing the GOP distaste for waste in Medicaid and the state Department of Human Services (DHS).

Temporary DHS Commissioner Shireen Gandhi was placed in the hot seat alongside the agency’s new inspector general, James Clark.

The session was the first legislative gathering since passage last week of President Donald Trump’s big, ugly bill.

“Unfortunately, we all know Medicaid is on the chopping block,” Clark said. “We need to be more vigilant than ever to ensure that we are protecting Medicaid dollars.”

Roughly 1.2 million Minnesotans, about 20% of the state’s population, receive health care through Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income residents, including children, seniors and those with disabilities.

Did the Republicans want to talk about the impact to the state and county budgets if estimates become reality and up to 250,000 Minnesota Medicaid enrollees lose coverage? Not really.

Clark and Gandhi tried to explain their work, vetting and educating Medicaid providers on the front end to ensure they understand licensing requirements and don’t have disqualifying criminal histories.

As for fraud, Clark noted that 90% of Medicaid, a nearly $20 billion program in Minnesota, is overseen by managed care providers, such as UCare and Blue Cross, not the state. Those providers are responsible for oversight, but that reality doesn’t fit the GOP narrative about lax DFL oversight.

And when it comes to policing Medicaid recipients, that job falls to the 87 counties, not the state DHS.

County workers already struggling with antiquated technology will soon be responsible for more frequent eligibility checks and ensuring compliance with new work requirements in Trump’s bill.

Rather than discuss how the state might help those soon-to-be-overwhelmed county employees, Rep. Isaac Schultz of Elmdale Township said that Republicans are championing the idea that there’s “dignity” in work and “if you’re an able-bodied adult, you should be contributing” by finding a job that provides health care.

When the DFLers had an opportunity to ask questions, Rep. Emma Greenman of Minneapolis wanted to know if the counties would be getting money to ease the heavier workload. “Is there any federal help that’s coming in that bill?” she asked Clark.

He said he was unaware of any federal aid in the offing.

Greenman also requested more details about the additional county workload, details that were provided by Matt Freeman, human services policy specialist for the Association of Minnesota Counties.

“We’re expecting significant cost impacts and workload impacts,” Freeman said. He cited a 2018 legislative analysis that put the county cost of overseeing a Medicaid work requirement at $160 million.

And who might bear those additional costs? It doesn’t take Nostradamus. Check those county property tax statements in a couple years, folks.

Robbins didn’t appear to like the direction of Greenman’s questioning. “This is all speculative because the bill just passed,” Robbins said.

Greenman was underwhelmed by the committee chair’s critique and responded that she’s trying to understand the consequences of a bill laden with goodies for government contractors and billionaires while wrapping Medicaid in red tape.

“That is waste. Inefficiency,” Greenman said. “We don’t have control over what the Republican Big Terrible Bill did but we will have to deal with that.”

There are legitimate questions about Medicaid spending. Legislative Auditor Judy Randall was in the audience for Tuesday’s hearing; her office in December faulted DHS for failing to reclaim $40 million in overpayments to providers.

But there’s little confidence this Republican-led oversight panel will get into the real work of helping overwhelmed county employees and cutting red tape, both of which would combat fraud with transparency and accountability.

At a minimum, the out-of-power party should have the wherewithal to develop a reliable and regular meeting schedule. Perhaps it will.

Robbins is supposedly a rising GOP star, a bona fide soccer mom who said Tuesday that she will announce soon whether she plans to run for governor or the U.S. Senate in 2026.

Given such ambition, she should use her committee assignment to demonstrate that Republicans are capable of organizing more than a two-car Tesla parade and are not merely content with a clown-car shtick of blaming and shaming.

Don’t hold your breath. Robbins said the oversight committee will convene for monthly meetings before the February start of the 2026 legislative session. Those meetings begin in September; the oversight committee is on vacation in August.