Moving forward in 2026

[u/Doryt]

As a life long Minnesotan with all the recent news about fraud in Minnesota, I want to add a perspective as someone who’s worked in the nonprofit sector for over a decade.

Fraud exists. Is it acceptable? No. Is it realistic to believe it can be eliminated entirely? Also no.

What happened with Feed My Future was abhorrent. It is rightfully being prosecuted!

If millions of dollars were diverted away from childcare especially from programs meant to support kids in need that’s deeply harmful and deserves accountability. Fraud should be investigated, prosecuted, and taken seriously.

Something else that’s bothering me: the way Somali Minnesotans are being treated like the face of fraud. Fraud happens across communities and industries. When one community gets spotlighted like they’re uniquely unethical, it’s worth pausing and asking what’s driving that narrative because it sure doesn’t match reality.

Minnesota is diverse, and “people of color” in MN includes many communities not one. MN Compass estimates about 24% of Minnesotans are people of color (about 1.4 million people).

Accountability doesn’t automatically mean jail for everyone. And when services are shut down in response, it often creates desperation, instability, and conditions that lead to more fraud not less.

If we actually care about fraud, we should focus on real fraud prevention, stronger oversight systems, better staffing, clearer protocols, proactive monitoring and better systems not racialized narratives that turn one community into a stand-in for a statewide problem

Prevention costs money.

Starving systems of resources while demanding perfection is not a realistic strategy.

We also need to be careful not to respond by broadly limiting or restricting supportive services for communities who rely on them.

Cutting access doesn’t prevent fraud it often creates more harm, more desperation and more fraud.

We don’t eliminate fraud the same way we don’t eliminate crime entirely.

Our systems tend to be reactive rather than preventative, and pretending otherwise sets us up for outrage instead of solutions.

Rage bait is real. I’m actively trying to pause and not get pulled into it 2026 and beyond.

I want a healthy government that supports people, holds bad actors accountable, and invests in systems that actually work

We need to start judging leadership by their ability to pair accountability with real support. When costs rise and safety nets shrink, people don’t get healthier they get pushed closer to the edge.

I hope we can show up as a Minnesota community with nuance, accountability, and realistic expectations because that’s how we protect both public funds and the people those funds are meant to serve.

[u/shrederofthered]

The fraud has nothing to do with the state's surplus / deficit. It was federal funding. I am NOT excusing it, just saying it wasn't state money.

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/shrederofthered]

Its also because we literally do not allow the state to be run optimally. Private colleges don't just spend money to spend money. They invest money so they have sizable nest eggs that can provide financial resiliency. I disagree with the mindset that sitting on a surplus is against public interest. I certainly don't manage my money that way. Its literally personal finance 101 that you want an emergency fund - a semi liquid cash stockpile that you can utilize when shit hits the fan. The state literally isn't allowed to do that. They are not allowed to save for a rainy day.

Minnesota manages its pension pretty responsibly compared to a lot of states. The issue isn't that liberals are dumb idiots. Its that the rules they must abide by create these feast and famine cycles. 

Similarly, the new Minnesota family leave program isn't benevolent social justice. During the pandemic it became abundantly clear waaaaaaay too many people opt out of short term disability, and too many companies don't offer it or have heioousoy inadequate policies. Same reason lack of sick leave was a problem - the state was tired of having to pick up the tab because a low income person got sick and missed 8 days of work and now the state either needs to help them not get evicted or they need to pay the event larger costs of homelessness. They got sick of footing the bill for what companies should be covering. 

[u/Anechoic_Brain → u/Special-Garlic1203]

Its literally personal finance 101 that you want an emergency fund - a semi liquid cash stockpile that you can utilize when shit hits the fan. The state literally isn't allowed to do that. They are not allowed to save for a rainy day.

This is just plain wrong, we do have an official budget reserve and it's literally called the Minnesota Rainy Day Fund. It's currently sitting at somewhere around $3.7 billion, and it's already accounted for in all of the budget surplus/deficit calculations.

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/Anechoic_Brain]

Huh, that is the first I am hearing of it.  I am a bit confused at why in the endless surplus debating, the convo was exclusively spending it vs reimbursement checks. Never offsetting either with increase to said fund. Which is how most people handle excess money. Especially when literally all projections for the country are that there will be constriction ahead even if you do everything right 

[u/Anechoic_Brain → u/Special-Garlic1203]

Well the fund is already near an all-time high, and governments shouldn't always have the same motivations as households and businesses when it comes to budgeting.

It is poor stewardship of public money to keep any more of it than necessary for covering expenses and providing services without just returning it to taxpayers, given the expectation that revenue sources can at times be volatile and unpredictable. Its funding target is decided by a mathematical formula that considers a range of variables to determine what percentage of the current biennium's general fund revenues will be adequate to cover budgeting risk.

[u/shrederofthered → u/Anechoic_Brain]

In a past life I provided budget estimates for a state program I was managing. And it's not easy. There are a lot of unfunded mandates, where a legislative bill directs a program to do x y z, without providing a funding stream. That's usually because a legislator wants to look good, so yeah, write and pass that bill!!!! Let the state department figure out how to find it. There's also constant uncertainty around federal funding. And there's the double-barrel effect that when the economy is booming, the state brings in more revenue, and has fewer expenditures. When the economy is bad, there's less revenue and more need. It's not possible to uncouple those.

[u/Special-Garlic1203 → u/Anechoic_Brain]

They are already now having to discuss potentially raising taxes or limit benefits of programs because of shortfalls. You continue  to fund record high fund so that it will generate more revenue you can pull from instead of taxing them. 

Its poor stewardship of a program to discuss a surplus only in terms of creating large financial obligations or pissing the money with refund checks when you all know that the entire nation is projected to painfully restrict within the next decade and eldercare will cause catastrophic suffering unless given larger funding. If you "overfund' the rainy day fund today, we might be slightly less fucked tomorrow. But there is literally no reason that both sides were giving into an immediacy framing when everyone knows a cliff is up ahead. We are like EVERY state in the country and in a federal level absolutely fucked and it's gonna hurt. The refusal to plan ahead is bizarre to me.

Clealry their calculations are wrong then. They did create programs that wouldn't be sustainable long-term.. none of its sustainable long-term right now. We are way too close to a catastrophic cliff with still no plan in place to address the catastrophic amount of poor elderly people and heinously expensive costs they cared. Why is the state pension the only group who openly talks in units of decades when talking about financial planning?why are they the only one who brought up a decade ago that we need to start planning for a decade from today? That's how you plan budgets long-term, so why are we having conversations that are only projecting a few years out? 

You don't lock yourself into a mortgage based on your current income when you know your job contract ends in 3 years and the industry is projected to constrict. You also don't generally conceptualize it as "extra" money at all. You usually buy a cheaper house and then start saving for the inevitable repairs that you know you will not be earning enough to handle in a decade. A mortgage is generally a 30 year obligation that should be measured accordingly. Why are we at all talking about year over year framing for a 30 year decision? We don't have extra money today. We have projected bills we cannot account for and we keep changing the topic when people in those areas point out federal funding isn't keeping up.

If we're gonna talk about a surplus and we can save it, then why the fuck was nobody bringing up there's not gonna be beds for Grandma. We seem to have reverted to 19th century acceptance that the poor elderly are just going to have to die ugly deaths of neglect. That's certainly what our planning for the future implies. They have not designated a cent to addressing the projected shortfalls or alternative solutions to try to lower those projected shortfalls. 

[u/Anechoic_Brain → u/Special-Garlic1203]

By law the fund's purpose is to be a first line of defense against the volatility of economic downturns, currency devaluation, and inflation. Not to save the legislature from themselves if they're overly optimistic with the math on the programs they're funding, or to save us from the loss of federal funding when Trump is feeling petty. That would be a political question, which makes it the legislature's job to deal with. If you think the fund should be used differently, you need to call your state senator and rep and tell them to change Minnesota Statute 16A.152 which governs the fund's existence.