Governor Tim Walz says he supports an independent audit of the state Human Services Department after Republican lawmakers in the Minnesota House called for it. Crookston Representative Debra Kiel says the entire department should be audited — which she acknowledges will probably be expensive, but adds, “I think in the end we will probably save ourselves dollars, and then we will know exactly what’s going on.”
It comes after media reports that the state must reimburse the federal government an estimated 48 million dollars for improper payments to some chemical dependency treatment providers — in addition to 25 million dollars the Human Services Department overpaid to two Native American tribes.