Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says he accepts some responsibility for oversight that was lacking involving hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money in the “Feeding Our Future” and “Frontline Worker Pay” programs that have come under the scrutiny of federal investigators and the Minnesota Legislative Auditor.

“We can always do better,” the governor said in response to several questions from reporters at a State Capitol news conference. “I think again, context matters. It was a challenging time for everybody but we certainly want to do better. I think we certainly take responsibility for that. I appreciate the points that are being made.”

Legislative Auditor Judy Randall made several points about those programs in the release of two reports last week on the controversial programs. “Time and time again throughout the four years that it participated in the child nutrition program (Minnesota Department of Education) missed opportunities to hold Feeding our Future accountable,” she said last week.

In a separate audit, Randall was also critical of the “Frontline Worker Pay Program.” She said after an investigation by her staff, “40 percent of paid applicants we either could not confirm eligibility or we determined they were in fact not eligible to receive the payment.”

That included as many as 50 or 60 people who were dead before the program even started, but received payments through the program fraudulently.

When asked if any state employees have been or will be held accountable for failing in their oversight of the programs, the governor said: “Held accountable in terms of their jobs or the things that they’re doing?” he responded. “This wasn’t malfeasance. Again, both of these cases there’s not a single state employee that was implicated doing anything that was illegal. They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should have.”

The governor did say there have been leadership changes in some of the departments in question, most notably with a change in the commissioner of the Department of Education. However, he stopped short of saying that change was made specifically because of the “Feeding Our Future” program.

Although the governor in part blamed the “challenging time” of the COVID-19 pandemic for the lack of oversight in both programs, Randall pushed back on that in an interview on “At Issue” Sunday morning.

“If you think about the timing, we saw issues with the Department of Education before the pandemic. The frontline worker pay was implemented in ’22. So again, yes, we still have COVID, I’m not saying we don’t, but it wasn’t that rush around 2020. So no, it’s not an excuse.”

The governor says the state has new tools like an “Office of Inspector General” in some departments to help identify fraud earlier and more effectively.