Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was named Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, and now his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is coming under renewed scrutiny.
There’s a good reason for this. as reasonRobbie Soave detailed yesterday that Walz has been a “tyrant” during the pandemic, forcing children as young as five to wear masks, placing strict limits on even outdoor gatherings and encouraging Minnesotans to report neighbors for social infractions Distance rules behavior.
Another aspect of Walz’s pandemic record also deserves a closer look: how Minnesota has spent its share of federal stimulus funds allocated through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP).
A quick review of the Treasury Department’s State and Local Finance Recovery Fund (SLFRF) database shows many projects that appear to have little or no connection to the coronavirus pandemic.
For example, Walz oversaw the use of more than $4.3 million (across two projects) to pay “state employees and visitors” to park at state facilities. The state is using another $1 million to fund a feasibility study on paid family leave and another $1 million to fund a statewide gun safety advertising campaign. State employees at the Minnesota Department of Corrections received more than $1 million in overtime pay thanks to the ARP stimulus bill. Another $7.8 million is allocated to two Twin Cities homeless shelters to cover ongoing costs.
Something else caught my attention. Among them is a $929,866 Small Business Development program to teach minority- and women-owned businesses how to qualify for state contracts. Another $1.8 million will fund the Crime Victims Grant Program and $1.24 million will go to Minnesota’s “Grow Your Own” grant program, a state program that helps recruit teachers and other school employees. The Girl Scouts received $957,794 for outreach programs in low-income communities.
All of these may be useful and noble projects, but it’s unclear why any of them are being funded with dollars intended for pandemic recovery.
(You can dig deeper into the SLFRF disbursement repository here: For the purposes of this article, I looked specifically at funds allocated in Minnesota and set the filter to only include line items with the payee name “Minnesota” —But you can also filter by municipality.
Although the information provided on the Treasury Department’s website is limited, some of the largest projects should also receive more scrutiny. For example, the state allocated more than $11 million to the Minnesota Zoo and nearly $3.8 million to the Science Museum of Minnesota to cover operations and maintenance costs. In some ways, that yes Related to the pandemic: Fear of disease and government social distancing regulations have undoubtedly hurt museums and zoos. The same goes for the $237,000 Cinema Relief Grant Program.
But Walz should be asked why he thinks federal taxpayers — who may not live in Minnesota and have never visited the state — should foot the bill.
as reason Post-pandemic federal aid to state and local governments has been largely unnecessary, according to reports over the past few years, and many governments have been struggling to find ways to use the $350 billion in free cash allocated by the ARP. The uses for a large portion of the money have been questioned, including subsidizing money-losing government golf courses, filling the salaries of public employees and funding tourism promotions.
However, Minnesota state and local governments eagerly gobbled up their share — by September 2023, Minnesota had shouldered more than 99% of the stimulus cash, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Perhaps that says something about Walz’s effectiveness as a manager. Faced with an unprecedented flood of taxpayer cash from Washington, Minnesota’s governor quickly found a way to fund nearly all of it. still, how The spending of the money shows that Walz, like many other elected officials, views the ARP as a slush fund rather than a direct response to a serious public health problem.
