Dear Neighbor,
One of my responsibilities as a legislator is to ensure that we are being good stewards of tax dollars. I addressed this subject in an email regarding questionable US Bank Stadium contracts last fall. Recently, another example of why oversight of how our tax dollars are being spent was released.
Last week the non-partisan Office of the Legislative Auditor released its report on Minnesota’s gainsharing program, which was legislated to incentivize state employees to deliver savings of taxpayer dollars within state agencies.
The report from the OLA concluded that “The Minnesota Department of Management and Budget has not implemented a ‘gainsharing’ program that has been required in Minnesota law since 2011” and urged MMB to comply with the law and implement a working gainsharing program. The OLA report shows how MMB ignored the 2011 statute and continually refused to implement a program consistent with state statue, which was written to reward state employees who actually produced real savings of Minnesota taxpayer’s money.
Instead, it appears more than $10 million in employee achievement award bonuses over a six-year period were paid out with little to no evidence that actual savings had been realized, something fellow Rep. Jim Nash and I questioned in committee, but were not sure of until the OLA report was issued. It now appears our probing was justified, but unfortunately not soon enough to prevent money which should not have been spent from being paid out.
Last session, MMB claimed it was impossible to demonstrate actual savings could be determined in any state program. But instead of coming back to the Legislature with proposed changes to statue with something that could be done, they developed a program which rewarded people for what were often subjective accomplishments. So, rather than the objective savings as called out in the statute, there have been more than $10 million of state taxpayer dollars misspent as a result of not following statute.
I bring this to you not to “get” someone, but rather so that you can see there are many functions in the Legislature beyond lawmaking or budgeting. To say I am quite upset with what happened would be an understatement. What’s more upsetting though is to find out the payouts have been going on for years, even while the House State Government Finance Committee I am a member of had asked for information which may have put a stop to this sooner. What it does for me, however, is reinforce in me a sense of how important it is to continually monitor what goes on with our government – even though often times digging into details is not as exciting as debating or proposing legislation.
The full OLA report on gainsharing can be found at https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/gainsharing.pdf.
On a separate subject, the task force to create a plan for the Legislative Budget Office, of which I have been appointed as chair, had its first meeting Thursday. The office was formed to improve the system of establishing fiscal estimates for how much a proposed new law would cost taxpayers. My intent in authoring the legislation which created the LBO is to increase objectivity and transparency for these fiscal notes, as well as remove any hint of politics because the LBO will now be a non-partisan process.
I will circle back with more on the LBO soon. As always, your thoughts are welcome on these or any other issues that are important to you.
Sincerely,
Bob