As the fraud in Minnesota unfolds, one of the questions I have is who wrote the grants, who signed the grants, and who approved the grants. Well, I think we now have a clue as to how all of this was allowed to happen.<\/p>\n
On Friday, The Daily Signal<\/a> reported:<\/p>\n A new report in Minnesota<\/a> highlights how a former bureaucrat involved in granting a church millions of dollars later went to work as a consultant for the church.<\/strong><\/p>\n The audit also says that the church failed to provide necessary reporting for hundreds of thousands of dollars of state funding.<\/strong><\/p>\n Both the church and the former bureaucrat deny any wrongdoing, and gave their side of the story to The Daily Signal.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n According to the report, issued by the Office of the Legislative Auditor last week, a grantee\u2014later identified as Zion Baptist Church in North Minneapolis<\/a>\u2014\u201dcould not provide us detailed invoices or program participant data to support a payment of $672,647.78\u2033 from the Department of Human Services\u2019 Bureau of Health Administration \u201cfor a single month of work.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Zion Baptist Church contracted with 14 subcontractors, two of which the legislative auditor visited. The church reportedly paid $40,000 to each of the subcontractors, without specifying rates per service unit.<\/strong><\/p>\n Those subcontractors failed to show who they served with the money they received. One of them said \u201cthe grantee told them they did not need to keep detailed participant records.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Finally, the grant manager \u201cwho approved the $672,647.78 payment left DHS a few days after approving it and later started to provide consulting services to the grantee,\u201d the report stated.<\/strong><\/p>\n The article notes:<\/p>\n Department of Human Services staff raised serious concerns about subcontractors during the grant period, but supervisors directed them \u201cnot to pursue further questioning,\u201d and approved a grant extension.<\/strong><\/p>\n The whistleblower said key questions remain, such as the justification for avoiding a competitive process for the grant, whether DHS performed due diligence on the subcontractors, whether subcontractors were for-profit entities, and why staff concerns were not pursued.<\/strong><\/p>\n The whistleblower also listed four grants that Zion Baptist Church received, two of which were sole source (without competition) and together totaled more than $3 million.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIs Zion some great place?\u201d the whistleblower asked, noting the multi-million-dollar sole-source grants. One one contract of more than $1.4 million, the church \u201cdid just a bad job performance\u201d and the state \u201ccancelled it early.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n This smells more than a little fishy to me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the fraud in Minnesota unfolds, one of the questions I have is who wrote the grants, who signed the grants, and who approved the grants. Well, I think we now have a clue as to how all of this … Continue reading