The Minnesota Legislative Auditor is offering some insight on recent allegations of wrong-doing in the state's "Behavioral Health Administration."
Judy Randall heads up the state's nonpartisan agency, keeping track of the money.
She says her auditors conducted site visits on grant recipients that DHS employees failed to do. They found that workers then fabricated documents.
"It's a devastating thing to hear that your staff might be doing that," Randall told WCCO's Blois Olson on this week's Sunday Take. "The grantees aren't our partners, right? We are giving them money to provide services to people who need it. That's who we're trying to get the services to. The service isn't giving a grant to an entity."
She says that the Behavioral Health Administration paid $2.1 million to seven grantees who never submitted a report.
"I just haven't seen the oversight, the regulatory mindset among the agencies," explains Randall. "I think now we're starting to."
Randall adds her auditors identified issues with progress reports for more than half of the 51 grant agreements for which there should have been at least one report, and that there were some issues with allegiance.
"It feels at times that there has been maybe some misplaced focus on working with the provider as a partner, rather than this is our instrument for getting the service to where we need," Randall adds. "And our responsibility as state government is to oversee that provider and make sure that provider is doing what we expect so that the real people who we really want to serve can get the service."
The legislative auditor just last week released a report which found problems with the state’s oversight of taxpayer-funded behavioral health grants.