After stalling for weeks, bill to create agency to combat fraud moves forward in House

[MUSIC PLAYING] NINA MOINI: Combating fraud is one of the central topics at the State Capitol this legislative session. One of the marquee bills, establishing an Office of the Inspector General, would create an independent agency to investigate fraud in state programs. DFL Representative Matt Norris of Blaine is the author of the bill in the House. He joins me now to tell us about it. Thanks for your time this afternoon, Representative Norris.

MATT NORRIS: Thanks for having me, Nina.

NINA MOINI: Why is there a need for an Office of the Inspector General? I know there has been some discussion at the Capitol about, well, could this work just happen within some of the efforts that have already been going on to combat fraud. Why is there a need for this office, in your opinion?

MATT NORRIS: One of the hallmarks of this office is its independence. It would be located in the executive branch, but through the bill, we've really tried to insulate it from any sort of political pressure so that it can focus on just one task. And that is identifying fraud, investigating it, but also, importantly, preventing fraud from occurring in the first place. We think it would be really beneficial to have a central, coordinated entity within the executive branch that is making sure that all state agencies across the state enterprise have good practices and procedures in place to prevent dollars from going out the door fraudulently in the first place.

NINA MOINI: What do you think would be the ideal resume of the Inspector General?

MATT NORRIS: Well, in the bill, we outline a number of qualifications for the role, but we're really looking for someone who is not a partisan figure. In fact, we even prohibit people who have previously held office from becoming the Inspector General for a number of years after they've served.

But we're looking for someone who is really focused on program integrity, perhaps someone with an investigative background, perhaps a forensic accounting background, somebody who is a straight shooter, wants to get to the facts, and is committed to making sure that people's tax dollars go to what we intend them to go to, things like helping kids with autism, helping low-income families pay for child care. I think Minnesotans broadly support those things, and they want to make sure that their tax dollars are actually going to achieve those aims.

NINA MOINI: Is this something that you've seen in other states? Do other states have specific offices like this? Or where did this idea come from? Are you modeling it after any other states?

MATT NORRIS: There are a number of states that have offices like this. And we've actually talked with our national counterparts at the National Council of State Legislatures to look at some of the different models in other states. But I do have to give credit to Senator Gustafson. She was actually the one who first came up with this idea, at least applying it here in Minnesota. She reached out to me shortly after the 2024 election and said, would you be interested in working with me on this in the House? And I said, absolutely. It sounds like a common sense approach to making sure that our tax dollars are being spent responsibly.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, so the Senate version of the bill has passed with bipartisan support. Everybody seems to agree something needs to change and something needs to be done. But the House version does seem to have stalled for several weeks until this morning. What compromises were you able to make this morning to get it through committee? Are you happy with where it's at?

MATT NORRIS: [CHUCKLES] So we brought forward a bill right at the beginning of session in the very first state government committee hearing of the year. That made what we thought were some important changes to the Senate Bill. And in particular, what I'm really focused on with the changes I'm proposing are efficient and responsible use of taxpayer dollars while crafting a bill that will actually work.

So what does that look like? First, increasing the focus on prevention of fraud in the Office. There's a lot of great investigative responsibilities that are already in the bill, but we know it's often really hard to recoup those dollars once they've gone out the door. And so it's much more cost-effective and efficient to try to prevent fraud from occurring in the first place.

And then, perhaps even more importantly, we want a bill that actually works. One of the things that I identified and others, as we were reviewing the bill that passed the Senate last year, is there was some language about the appointment process that would have actually rendered the bill unconstitutional if it had passed in the form that it passed off the Senate floor.

And so both those prevention measures and the constitutionality fix were included in some of the changes we made today in committee. And that's why, even though I still have some concerns about other parts of the bill, we were comfortable moving it forward to the next committee stop.

NINA MOINI: Are you talking about the earlier draft that would have allowed the governor to appoint someone not approved by an advisory board?

MATT NORRIS: Yeah, that's the real constitutional hang-up. For the bill to be constitutional, we ultimately have to allow the governor to appoint whomever he or she wants. That's a constitutional requirement for any executive branch office. So the version that passed through committee today does allow the governor to ultimately appoint whomever the governor wants, but there still are important protections in the bill.

There are qualifications that the person has to meet in order to be appointed, but then there is a bipartisan group of legislators who will vet candidates and recommend those candidates to the governor. And while the governor doesn't have to choose from those recommended candidates, we believe that because they're well-vetted, because they have bipartisan support, the governor would more than likely ultimately appoint one of those recommended candidates.

NINA MOINI: OK, so that'll be one step. You also talked about the importance of prevention. I also want to talk about one of the other sticking points seems to have been around the law enforcement arm of this agency. It sounds like Republicans want this office to have its own law enforcement agency. You believe the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the BCA, which is already an investigative agency in the state, should do some of that work. What do you see as the right path moving forward?

MATT NORRIS: One of the things that is really important to me when we pass this bill is that we are efficient with taxpayer dollars. We don't want to create unnecessary additional bureaucracy. And so within the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension right now, we have a Financial Crimes Division. That's about four dozen folks. These are professional folks. These are, in many cases, sworn law enforcement officers. They're not political actors. And they have vast experience working on these sorts of white collar crime, fraud cases. And so we believe that they can do the job effectively.

The concern I have with setting up another small, little law enforcement agency within the Office of the Inspector General is there are a lot of fixed costs that come when setting up a law enforcement agency, regardless of whether you have three sworn officers or 300 sworn officers. It's the same reason why a lot of little small towns and townships throughout Minnesota don't create their own police force. Instead, they rely on the county sheriff to provide those services.

NINA MOINI: Representative Norris, we've been fortunate to have a lot of people on the program who disperse these types of funds to the public, members, county officials from several counties, people who work in these state programs, providers. And all of them have said that technology is one of their, if not their biggest, hurdle to fighting fraud. That systems are just out of date, technology is out of date, but that the cost of updating things and bringing them together and centralizing them would obviously be very high. But as you talk about investigating fraud on the prevention side of things, how big of a priority has that been for you in your work trying to fight fraud?

MATT NORRIS: And that's a really good point of why we want to be efficient with the use of taxpayer dollars in setting up this Office of the Inspector General. Because while this OIG bill has gotten a lot of attention at the Capitol, there are a lot of other elements that are going to be critical to effectively fight fraud. You rightfully brought up technology. Some of the technology we're using is still green screen technology, where you can't even use a mouse. And that alone limits our ability to identify patterns and data that might tip us off to potential fraud.

So we need to invest in the proper technology. I've got another bill that I'm working on that would enhance penalties for people who commit Medicaid fraud, and add more investigators and prosecutors to prosecute and investigate those cases. And so the OIG is one component, but there are several aspects we need to look at and ideally address this year during the legislative session in order to take a comprehensive approach to fighting fraud.

NINA MOINI: And just lastly, Representative Norris, funds have been frozen at the state level, at the federal level. This is an ongoing issue. Obviously, if this Office of the Inspector General were to be passed into law this year, signed off on by the governor, how long would it take for it to be up and running with an appointed Inspector General, do you think?

MATT NORRIS: The bill sets forth a timeline, and the goal is to have the Inspector General appointed by early next year. So they would be able to get up and running pretty quickly, since we know they've got important work to do. And I think that's why I'm trying to be so diligent about how we design this bill, how we design this office, so that it can be ready to do that work quickly for Minnesotans right away on day one.

NINA MOINI: All right. Representative Norris, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.

MATT NORRIS: Thanks, Nina.

NINA MOINI: That's DFL Representative Matt Norris.