GOP’s Kristin Robbins says her Minnesota fraud prevention committee is not a political stunt. Is she right?

The first order of business for Kristin Robbins was addressing the critic seated beside her.

It was mid-September, and the Maple Grove Republican had just gaveled to order a packed meeting of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention Committee, the first since she declared a run for governor a few weeks earlier. Rep. Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul, her often adversarial DFL colleague, wanted to know how she would address the “inherent conflict” between running for governor and chairing a committee created to scrutinize the administration of her possible political opponent, Gov. Tim Walz.

“I am an elected representative of my district chairing this committee,” Robbins said, precisely enunciating each word. “The governor is an elected governor of the state. He doesn’t plan to curtail his governor activities. And I do not plan to curtail my elected representative activities.”

Then came Robbins’ big reveal.

Right before the hearing she learned that the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) had ended its relationship with Eric Grumdahl, formerly an assistant commissioner. Grumdahl had managed Housing Stabilization Services, a program terminated in August amid mounting evidence that the housing and health care providers DHS contracted with were committing fraud. Because of the resignation, Grumdahl would not be available to testify. 

“So, if there’s any grandstanding going on or trying to hide the ball, it is not by this committee,” Robbins said. “Thank you.”

Ever since Robbins got picked in January to chair the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, DFLers have brushed off the panel as the “let’s make Walz look bad” committee. Robbins’ run for governor has not exactly disabused Democrats of that notion. 

Related: Stopping waste, fraud and abuse in Minnesota state government is so bipartisan. Right?

“It’s a total partisan exercise,” said House DFL leader Zack Stephenson of Coon Rapids. 

Moreover, there is no evidence the committee has prevented — or even uncovered — fraud. 

Still, Robbins has emerged as the face of the issue that Minnesota Republicans are sure to campaign on in 2026, which is a galling lack of oversight at DHS, the agency largely in charge of administering the state’s sprawling Medicaid program known as Medical Assistance. At worst, her committee has shone an unflinching spotlight on some of the state government’s shortcomings. 

“What is the point of this committee?” said Shannon Watson, founder of Majority in the Middle, a nonprofit that advocates for bipartisanship in Minnesota politics. “If it is to make headlines, then the committee is doing a bang-up job.”

Here is what we know about Robbins’ committee and what we don’t.

How did this committee get started?

In talks last winter about how a House of equal numbers Republicans and DFLers should share power, Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, honed in on the idea of a committee that would consist of five Republicans and three DFLers to ferret out corruption in state agencies. 

Robbins said that Demuth tapped her to lead the committee simply because she is fairly senior and didn’t already chair a committee. 

Her mandate was “to shine a spotlight on fraud and make sure that we had a place for the public to provide whistleblower reports,” Robbins said. 

During an interview in a conference room of the Centennial Office Building by the Capitol, Robbins said that her time in Washington working for Illinois Congressperson Harris Fawell spurred an interest in fraud prevention. 

Fawell was a suburban Chicago moderate whose pet subject was exposing legislative earmarks. Robbins recalled that Fawell “found waste in the federal budget and offered amendments on the floor to get rid of it.”

Fawell left the U.S. House in 1999. In the time since, Robbins has been a self-described “quintessential soccer mom.” She also co-founded the Economic Club of Minnesota and served on a Gov. Tim Pawlenty administration board to end chronic homelessness, among other activities. She was first elected to the Minnesota House in 2018.

Minnesota already has an Office of the Legislative Auditor that scrutinizes the state executive branch and delivers reports to a commission of lawmakers. So, there were questions from the jump about whether this new committee was redundant.

The panel’s maiden meeting in February coincided with the first day of a criminal trial in the Feeding Our Futures scandal, which involved the Walz administration mishandling Covid-era federal money. It was also the same day Robbins, Demuth and Harry Niska, the House GOP floor leader, wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi asking for help, “to investigate the growing fraud in our state, which has resulted in over $610 million in precious resources – the great majority of it federal funding for human service programs – not getting to people in need.”

The $610 million figure aligns with numbers tabulated by the Minnesota scandal tracker created by the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnetonka-based conservative think tank whose members have testified twice before the committee. The scandal tracker begins its count of fraudulently spent money at the start of the Walz administration. 

DFLers who joined the committee said they tried to keep an open mind. 

“I was looking forward to bringing my background as a prosecutor to this work,” Pinto said. 

Rep. Steve Elkins, DFL-Bloomington, joined partly because he wanted to learn more about the state’s computer systems. Elkins said that the committee “has opened my eyes” to outdated technology at both DHS and counties that administer Medicaid payments. 

“They are using 80s green screen technology,” Elkins said. “I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was this bad.”

What has the Fraud Prevention Committee done?

The committee started with hearings about potential conflicts of interest when lawmakers select nonprofits to receive grants. 

And in October, it devoted an entire hearing about voter fraud, despite unrebuked testimony from Ken Peterson, a board member of Clean Elections Minnesota, that, since 2020, such fraud “cumulatively affected .00005% of the votes cast” in state elections. 

“Voter fraud occurred here at the rate of roughly one-quarter a person’s chance of being struck by lightning,” Peterson said. 

In between, there has been mostly DHS. 

Shireen Gandhi, acting commissioner of DHS, was subpoenaed in February to testify about DHS-licensed childcare facilities. Gandhi was subpoenaed again in March to discuss her agency’s behavioral health administration program. 

The acting commissioner was not subpoenaed in April, but Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was called to testify on his office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The next month, the committee focused on Medicaid eligibility. 

Gandhi returned to committee action in July along with recently appointed DHS Inspector General James Clark to revisit the subject of Medicaid eligibility. 

And Gandhi and Clark were before the committee once more in September, hats in hand, amid news reports and DHS mea culpas of rampant fraud in Housing Stabilization Services as well as programs regarding autism and assisting adults with disabilities. 

At that meeting, Gandhi “corrected the record” that Grumdahl was not necessarily fired, stating that the terms of his departure were confidential. 

Gandhi deadpanned to Robbins, “Thank you again for the invitation to appear in front of this committee. I believe it is the fourth time DHS has been asked to come in front of this committee since its inception.”

Exactly one day after the September hearing, Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joseph Thompson announced criminal charges against eight defendants who were providers in the Housing Stabilization Service program. 

“What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources for those in need,” Thompson declared. “It feels never ending. I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”

Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake and a committee member, said that the committee’s hearings helped the public understand the magnitude of graft at DHS.

“The end result is that fraud is being talked about,” Rarick said. “I think the committee has been incredibly successful.”

Robbins said that DHS’s troubles pushed her to run for governor, an announcement she made in August. 

“We have years and years of experience of Office of Legislative Auditor reports flagging all the failures of internal controls, like we’ve had report after report,” Robbins said. “But all the hearings, all the reports, all the even strengthening of statutes will fundamentally not stop fraud on the front end unless there’s a governor who’s willing to have a no-fraud, no-excuses culture.”

What has this committee not done?

No one can accuse Robbins’ committee of report after report. Unlike the frequent findings of deception or mere miscues coming from the Office of Legislative Auditor, the committee has not issued any reports, and there is no definitive plan to start, Robbins said. 

Robbins’ committee has also not advanced legislation, a fact DFLers are quick to point out. 

“What we really want is to be taking actions that increase program integrity,” Pinto said. “Anything that merely raises visibility is not enough.”

Robbins pushed back, noting that the Legislature passed antifraud provisions in 2025, just not ones out of her committee. 

One such bill required state-provided, anti-fraud training for state employees who manage grants. Another stipulated that future legislation possess a “fraud note” as companion to a customary fiscal note, warning how grifters could potentially exploit a new law. 

Yet another gave DHS more latitude to stop payments to health care providers amid credible allegations of fraud. Walz invoked this law last month, suspending payments to providers across 14 DHS programs as Eden Prairie-based Optum audits suspicious billing activity.

“We as a committee, we’re all very involved in those discussions and supporting those bills,” Robbins said. 

But Ellison said that the committee was useless in advocating for a bill he supported to expand the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit from 32 to 41 investigators, and to increase penalties for Medical Assistance fraud. 

“The committee seemed disinterested in this important bill to address fraud,” an Ellison spokesperson emailed. 

Robbins’ responded that because the bill requested funding it would have first gone to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee. She added that she would have held a hearing if the bill author, Rep. Matt Norris, DFL-Blaine, had requested one. 

Elkins said a committee that does not write reports documenting fraud and does not pass bills is inherently limited in its impact.

“We have little publicly available to show for it,” Elkins said. “It is a dog and pony show.”

A spokesperson for Walz added, “Unfortunately, this committee has so far been reluctant to advance proactive solutions.”

What has the committee maybe done?

Recall that Robbins’ committee has a dual mission to not just scrutinize fraud, but serve as a resource for whistleblowers. Toward that aim, Robbins said that she monitors a whistleblower portal that was created in March, and has yielded a mountain of complaints.

“In the first month, I think we had 530 whistleblower reports,” Robbins said. “I think we’re well over 700 or 800 now.”

“We’re grateful for that, because Minnesotans want clean government, and lots of times the best whistleblowers are actually the people who work on these programs, but they have not felt like they’ve been able to come forward,” Robbins said. 

But Robbins only lets a select group of her staff members view these complaints, citing their sensitive and confidential nature. The prohibition applies not just to journalists and members of the public, but fellow lawmakers.

“We have no access to that portal,” Pinto said, adding that no one who has come before the committee was discovered from the whistleblower portal, but instead through high-profile news stories. 

Robbins countered that one of the people who testified at the September meeting submitted a complaint to the portal. That may be true. But both Medicaid patients who spoke at the September hearing, Rachel Lien and Cain Pence, had already shared their stories with KARE 11 and KSTP.

Robbins said that she has referred some whistleblower reports to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, which that office confirmed, while declining to describe the substance or merit of the complaints. 

Robbins said that she has also passed along information to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota. The criminal complaints against Housing Stabilization Service providers thus far do not cite Robbins or the committee as a source of information. 

“What happens is, I get the whistleblower reports, we do as much as we can, and once I turn it over to law enforcement, I don’t know what happens to it,” Robbins said. “So, I can’t take credit for this or that, because most of them are still ongoing.” 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

How will this committee fight future fraud?

Picture a legal thriller. For reasons unknown, I think of the long ago hit, “A Few Good Men.”

In that movie, the heroic lawyer, played by Tom Cruise, grills the villain, played by Jack Nicholson, about the coverup of a heinous crime on a naval base. 

On the witness stand, Nicholson tries to intimidate and misdirect Cruise. Eventually in frustration, the Nicholson character growls, “You can’t handle the truth,” telling the Cruise character that he is too callow to fathom the awesome responsibilities of being part of the national security bureaucracy. 

That dynamic is exactly the opposite of the Fraud Prevention Committee. 

In hearings, the hero, Robbins, grills the villain, DHS, about their failure to vet providers, or their inability to expediently handle complaints. But instead of intimidation or misdirection, DHS says it could not agree more that the Medicaid bureaucracy needs massive improvements. 

“What is still needed to address provider fraud? A lot,” said Clark, the DHS inspector general, at the September hearing. “Greedy people in businesses have learned to exploit our programs.”

And in response to questions for this story, a DHS spokesperson said, “We welcome opportunities to collaborate with legislators to improve program integrity and update them on our anti-fraud work. There are many nuances and complexities to Medicaid and DHS services – we stand ready to help legislators make informed decisions about policy.”

Elkins, a former data architect at Optum, said that he has been impressed by Clark, and would like the opportunity to help him modernize technology at DHS. 

Related: Will Minnesota governor’s race chill collaboration in 2026 legislative session?

Walz’s office said it too stands ready to assist.

“The governor has encouraged the legislature to partner with his administration on this issue and is eager to hear ideas, regardless of which party they come from,” a Walz spokesperson said. “This committee has the opportunity to roll their sleeves up and propose comprehensive solutions to restructuring flawed programs.”

But Robbins said that Walz and DHS suspended payments across 14 Medical Assistance programs only because the fraud cat is very much out of the bag.

“I called for a full DHS audit months ago, and they didn’t respond,” she said. “I would say they’re Johnny-come-lately to this effort.”

In the same breath, Robbins said, “the more people who are trying to help stop fraud the better.”

But she also repeatedly chided Walz for not personally telling her about the payment suspensions before a public announcement.

According to Pinto, Robbins’ run for governor  means that the committee chair will be antagonistic to the Walz administration no matter what it does. 

“It cannot help but undermine the integrity of the committee,” Pinto said. 

Pinto wants Robbins to step down and be replaced by someone who would not see collaboration with Walz and DHS as a threat to their personal advancement. Robbins and her Republican colleagues, of course, see the situation differently. 

“That has never crossed my mind that she is doing this for political gain,” Rarick said. “It hasn’t been a concern.”

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