Minnesota GOP Candidate Heidi Heino 'Stress Tests' Walz's Fraud Watchdog Law Against Feeding Our Future and Finds Gaps
The Republican running in Senate District 36 says the new Office of Inspector General would have caught the $250 million scheme, but only after the money was gone. She wants payment freezes and outside audits.
A Republican state Senate candidate in Minnesota says the fraud-prevention law Gov. Tim Walz signed would not have stopped the state's biggest recent scandals in time, Fox News reports.
The law. It creates an independent statewide Office of the Inspector General. The office oversees the state's other inspectors general, investigates suspected fraud across state programs, sets fraud-prevention standards and improves data sharing between agencies. Fox says it passed as Minnesota deals with fraud schemes involving childcare, autism, housing and disability services.
The test. Heidi Heino, the Republican candidate in Minnesota's 36th Senate District, told Fox News Digital she ran the law against past cases, including Feeding Our Future. "When I stress tested against Feeding Our Future and some of the other fraud schemes that we had in Minnesota, it would have found the fraud eventually, but it's way after the money was already gone and we would still be stuck trying to claw it back," she said. Heino, who works in underwriting, said she used similar review practices from her day job.
The red flag. She pointed to a 2,800 percent jump in payments to Feeding Our Future from 2020 to 2021, which she says should have triggered review automatically. Fox says the scheme allegedly stole $250 million from a federal child nutrition program during the pandemic. Heino also argued the group should not have been allowed to answer complaints against itself, noting that 30 complaints went to the state Department of Education and were mostly overlooked.
Her fixes. She proposed freezing payments right away when risks appear, running a full review and triggering an outside audit. "The OIG has good bones, but it needs teeth," she said. She called the law a "great first step" and applied the same concerns to the state's paid family leave program, which she says pays out before a doctor's note is verified.
Context. Fox notes Republicans blame leadership and oversight failures for the fraud, and that the Trump administration has set up a federal anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance. Fox says it asked Walz's office and the state Education Department for comment. The report includes no reply from either.
Note for readers: this is a candidate's own analysis, offered during a campaign. We have not seen the law's text or her full test.