ST PAUL, Minn. — The head of the Minnesota Board on Aging assured state lawmakers Wednesday many steps have already been taken to address glaring oversight issues uncovered in an audit by a state watchdog agency.
“In 2023, we have been making progress in shoring up our internal controls and achieving full compliance with federal and state requirements,” Kari Benson, the MBA’s executive director, told members of the Legislative Audit Commission.
“Tapping into some of the one-time COVID recovery funding, we have worked with an outside contractor to do a full review and identify gaps that exist.”
The Board works with seven regional agencies on aging, that then work through 17 nutrition service providers and 131 subcontractors to provide meals to 40,000 Minnesotans through programs such as Meals on Wheels.
The Office of the Legislative Auditor this week released a report that showed the Board on Aging hadn’t done many of the basic compliance checks on the Senior Nutrition Program since 2017. The audit didn’t point to outright fraud, but the lapses in oversight left the programs vulnerable to being exploited.
“We want to make sure that everybody who needs those meals is getting them. And if we don't know if the sites exist, if we don't know if the meals are being served, if we don't know if the people in the database who we think are getting the meals are actually getting the meals, if we don't know any of that, then we don't know if the program is serving its intended purpose,” Legislative Auditor Judy Randall told KARE.
Her audit team did site visits to 16 senior nutrition programs and determined they were legitimate meal providers, but that’s only a fraction of the total sites involved.
“It's really an issue of oversight. If a service provider or area agency on aging is saying, ‘We served 200 meals last week and we need the reimbursement’ they can look and see there's documentation that 200 meals were served, and this is the actual cost of the meal and what is that based on.”
The agencies fell behind on compliance checks as well as certifying that recipients were all eligible. During the pandemic, federal rules suspended that in-person certification process, but Benson said that has since resumed.
Most of the money – 89% – comes from the federal government as part of the Older Americans Act. But it’s up to the state to make sure the meals are provided, and the money, roughly $12 million per year, is accounted for to guard against waste and fraud.
Benson said one of the challenges even before COVID was that the federal government limited how much funding could be used for administration. The state legislature last session authorized the MBA to hire two more full-time staffers to help with compliance work.
“We are implementing barcode scanning technology to track in real-time the number of meals provided at each site for each person served,” Benson told legislators.
“And we are getting back into gear with doing new certifications and recertifications, which was the practice that was suspended during the pandemic.”
Benson said she doesn’t disagree with the findings of the audit, but she is confident all of the feeding sites paid for by the Senior Nutrition Program do actually exist.
“We are proud of this service and the impact we have on the well-being of those older adults we serve," she said. "During reconciliations, we have verified the area agencies on aging are using those funds appropriately.”
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