Marshall Helmberger

We have a constitutional crisis in the making in Washington, D.C., but Rep. Pete Stauber is spending his staff resources playing politics back here in Minnesota. In a release sent to media in the district last week, Stauber takes aim at Gov. Tim Walz for the administration’s efforts to investigate possible fraud in the county-run child care assistance program, or CCAP, which is overseen by the Department of Human Services, or DHS.
This wasn’t too surprising. There’s been plenty of speculation that Stauber is eyeing a run for governor in the near future, given that his congressional seat is likely to go away following the 2030 census. He denied that rumor this week, for what that’s worth.
Like many of Stauber’s constituents, we’ve tried contacting his office in recent days, without success, to ask questions and express concern about all the clearly unconstitutional actions being undertaken by the Trump administration in their first few weeks in office.
Stauber, who took an oath to protect the constitution, is in a position to stand up for the separation of powers. Instead, he’s making up scandals back in Minnesota. Stauber’s Feb. 3 release, titled “Stauber Leads Minnesota Republican Delegation in Letter to Walz Demanding Answers on Massive Fraud Scandal,” was designed to catch the attention of any reporter. Yet, like so much of what we receive from Stauber’s press office, there was little substance behind the incendiary headline.
The nutshell from his letter was his request for “documents and communications regarding the 62 active investigations into child care centers, including all violations cited and funding allocated to each center.” Stauber continued: “This will allow us to provide critical oversight of your administration’s questionable operation and failure of management.”
The letter stems from a report that aired earlier this month on KSTP 5, the Twin Cities’ version of Fox News, that raised, but failed, to answer questions about a couple larger child care facilities in Minneapolis that continued to receive payments from the CCAP program despite a history of repeated safety and records violations.
Having had some involvement with the regulations surrounding child care centers, I know that these violations could be serious and could also be largely technical in nature. Overregulation has certainly played a role in the chronic shortage of child care slots in Minnesota, but that’s a different story.
At the very end of the KSTP story, the reporter noted that the Department of Human Services has 62 open investigations into possible cases of overbilling the CCAP program, a fact which Stauber has opted to turn into an attack on the state agency and, by extension, Gov. Walz.
This turns the facts and logic on its head. I spoke with a representative at DHS, who stated that the department opened a fraud unit back in 2013, under Gov. Mark Dayton, in part to ensure that CCAP dollars weren’t going for children who either didn’t exist or weren’t being served.
Keep in mind, there are 1,800 licensed child care centers in Minnesota and another 5,800 licensed family day cares. With a total of 7,600 providers, it’s hardly a surprise that there are a few unscrupulous operators trying to take advantage of a CCAP funding stream designed to help working families afford child care. DHS has a fraud unit to investigate that one-out-of-a-hundred providers that try to abuse the system.
On average, DHS opens 43 investigations into CCAP violations each year, and each investigation can take weeks or months to resolve. While it’s easy for a blowhard congressman to allege a “massive fraud scandal,” actual investigators trying to get the bottom of it need to support such allegations with facts, including evidence that discrepancies were intentional, not simply errors.
If KSTP had reported that there were no investigations into possible fraud, THAT would a scandal. That there are 62 current investigations suggests that DHS is doing what it can, under the laws promulgated by the Legislature, to root out and address those rare cases of abuse.
Since 2021, DHS reports that they have stopped payments to 79 providers and have made 18 referrals for criminal investigation based on their internal investigations of fraud.
Is it disappointing that a small percentage of humans will take advantage of just about anything to enrich themselves? Absolutely. But a state department undertaking investigations of the one percent of child care operators that try to take advantage of the system? That’s hardly a scandal… it’s called doing their job.
Rep. Stauber should, perhaps, focus on his job, such as addressing the disaster in Washington that he seems far too willing to ignore. To quote from Stauber’s letter, “Minnesotans deserve better leadership, and they deserve transparency.” And this from a guy who hasn’t held a town hall in person in ages, has refused to take part in a real debate with a political opponent for years, and who responds to constituent contacts with obtuse talking points, when he responds at all. What’s that they say about people who live in glass houses?