What did the June 2024 Minnesota legislative auditor report conclude about oversight failures?
Executive summary
The June 2024 special review by Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded that the Minnesota Department of Education’s (MDE) oversight of the sponsor Feeding Our Future was inadequate and “created opportunities for fraud” in federal child nutrition programs [1]. The report catalogs missed red flags, supervisory lapses, and procedural gaps that the auditor says enabled a scheme that led to dozens of federal charges, while MDE disputes portions of the auditor’s characterization and points to steps it has taken in response [2] [3].
1. What the auditor found: a blunt verdict on inadequate oversight
The OLA’s June 2024 summary states plainly that “MDE’s inadequate oversight of Feeding Our Future created opportunities for fraud,” describing agency responsibilities under federal law — from training and guidance to termination authority — that the auditor judged to have been insufficiently exercised in this case [1] [4].
2. Specific oversight failures the report documents
The review says MDE failed to act on warning signs, in some instances effectively asking the sponsor to investigate complaints about itself, and relied on offsite monitoring and alternative oversight that proved inadequate to detect or deter abuse [5] [1] [4]. The auditor highlights gaps in monitoring, risk-based review, and application screening that left program controls weak [1] [6].
3. Scale and consequences tied to those failures
The report ties MDE’s oversight shortcomings to a fraud scheme that federal prosecutors allege involved vast sums and many participants: the summary notes that between September 2022 and February 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice charged dozens of people in connection with an alleged $250 million scheme and that multiple defendants had pleaded guilty as of May 2024 [2] [3]. The auditor frames the inadequate state oversight as creating the conditions in which that alleged fraud could occur [1].
4. Scope limits of the review and the auditor’s caution
The Office of the Legislative Auditor’s review focused specifically on MDE’s oversight of one sponsor, Feeding Our Future, and did not assess MDE’s broader implementation of all federal nutrition programs; the report explicitly says it is not expressing an opinion on defendants’ guilt or innocence in the criminal cases [3]. The OLA also made its full report and a summary publicly available for scrutiny [1].
5. MDE’s response and remedial steps — and its disagreement with parts of the report
MDE Commissioner Willie L. Jett II disputed the auditor’s characterization that oversight was inadequate, saying the department met applicable standards and made effective referrals to law enforcement, while also calling the fraud a “travesty” and listing independent changes MDE had implemented, including creating an Office of Inspector General, adding legal staff, updating fraud-reporting training, and contracting for additional financial reviews [2]. The auditor, however, recommended clearer statutory criteria or rulemaking authority for sponsor selection, stronger emphasis on program integrity, and risk-based monitoring if waivers to oversight are granted again [6] [1].
6. Political and public fallout: competing narratives and agendas
The audit’s findings quickly fueled partisan and media debate: critics used the report to argue administration-level accountability failures, while sources sympathetic to MDE emphasized reforms and the criminal investigations led by federal authorities; coverage of the report has sometimes been framed to support political narratives about executive accountability and government competence [7] [4]. The auditor’s findings are nonpartisan but political actors have leveraged them to press for legislative changes and oversight reforms [6].