Minnesota legislators who have been working outside the public eye to reach a deal on COVID-19 relief say they will convene Thursday at the Capitol to approve the aid.
Minnesota legislators will meet Thursday for action on COVID-19 relief
Legislators are reviewing Gov. Tim Walz's funding requests for food shelves and other emergency services.
March 25, 2020 at 3:37PM
While lawmakers have essentially recessed until mid-April because of the COVID-19 emergency, members of the state House disclosed details Tuesday of meetings they have been holding for the past week to discuss bills ranging from driver's license expiration forgiveness to child care policy proposals related to the coronavirus.
They are also reviewing Gov. Tim Walz's proposal to spend an additional $356 million on COVID-19 response.
Walz's supplemental budget proposal would include money to help child care centers, food shelves, homeless shelters and veterans weather the pandemic. It would create a $200 million COVID-19 fund in the state treasury that state agencies could use broadly to respond to the pandemic. The fund could be used to pay for increased staff and health care needs in prisons, or overtime for people working with direct care and treatment programs that serve people with developmental disabilities, mental illness and addiction.
"Legislative leaders have agreed to reconvene on Thursday. We are continuing to work closely with the Walz Administration on urgent COVID-19 matters to protect the health and well-being of Minnesotans. We will publicly release details on specific legislation on the House and Senate websites as soon as we can," Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Senate Republican Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said in a joint statement.
For lawmakers to pass the relief bills on Thursday and send them to Walz for his signature still requires the politically divided Legislature to strike a deal.
Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said in a statement that Minnesotans are facing significant medical concerns and financial hardships and the House's goal is to pass legislation to safeguard people's health and economic well-being.
She released an outline Tuesday of informal working group meetings that have taken place via conference calls that were not open to reporters and the public. She said the House is trying to create opportunities for people to engage in the process, possibly by making committee hearings available to the public online. For now, people can submit comment forms on the state's website or reach legislators to share their thoughts.
Thousands of people have contacted DFL House members and heard back in the past week, Hortman said.
As lawmakers gather this week, Hortman and Gazelka said they will follow Minnesota Department of Health guidelines to keep legislators, staff and the public safe.
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Gov. Tim Walz called Thursday for Minnesota to increase criminal penalties for Medicaid fraud in response to the FBI’s investigation into autism service providers.
The FBI searched at least two Minnesota autism centers Thursday as it investigated “substantial evidence” of fraudulent Medicaid claims made by many companies participating in the state program. The state-funded Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) program, which serves people under 21 with autism spectrum disorder, has experienced exponential growth in Medicaid billing. Reimbursement claims soared from $1.7 million in 2017, the first year of the program, to nearly $400 million last year and again this year.
Federal law enforcement suspects many autism centers are billing for services not actually provided.
“This pisses me off unlike anything else,” Walz told the Star Tribune in an interview Thursday afternoon. “They’re stealing from us … You’ve got to increase the penalty on these crimes. These are crimes against children, in my opinion.”
“We’re catching these people; they’re going to prison,” Walz said. “I don’t think they’re going long enough.”
The DFL governor said he’s fed up with fraudsters who are bilking programs meant to serve children in need. In another major Minnesota fraud case, Feeding Our Future and other organizations stole $250 million during the pandemic from a federal program to provide meals to low-income children after school and during the summer.
Some people involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme owned or were associated with autism centers, according to the federal officials.
Minnesota House GOP Leader Lisa Demuth issued a statement Thursday calling on Walz to “order state agencies to immediately pause payments to anyone or any entity that is suspected or convicted of fraud in other state programs.”
“State agencies must do more to stop criminal activity before even more taxpayer dollars are lost to bad actors,” Demuth said.
Walz said it’s not always possible to pause payments. Even if agencies suspect possible fraudulent activity, he said the law doesn’t always allow them to immediately act.
“When we’re pretty certain someone’s involved in this, sometimes we don’t have the legal authority to cut them off until the conviction goes through,” Walz said. “That’s one of the problems.”
Walz said he’d like to see the state use predictive artificial intelligence to flag possible fraudsters more quickly. He said he plans to propose a “pretty significant package” of fraud prevention measures ahead of next year’s legislative session, which starts Jan. 14.
Republicans in the state House and Senate have called for more action to reduce government fraud and waste. Walz said he welcomes their suggestions.
“If they have good ideas, we’re going to work with them,” he said.
The returns were filed on behalf of themselves and others, according to federal prosecutors.
