Minority House Leader Demuth calls for investigation into alleged Feeding Our Future cover-up at MDE

ST. PAUL — House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth is calling for an investigation into allegations raised in court documents that the Minnesota Department of Education engaged in systematic and potentially illegal efforts to evade compliance with the Minnesota Data Practices Act for documents related to the Feeding our Future fraud scandal. 

The allegations were first reported by the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence and later the Star Tribune.

The reports claim that MDE intentionally mislabeled documents and misspelled words to avoid being flagged in Data Practices Act requests, deleting documents, and used burner phones and personal emails to conduct government business.

“The disturbing allegations raised in recent court filings suggest that the Minnesota Department of Education may have broken state law in an attempt to cover-up documents related to the Feeding our Future fraud scandal,” Demuth said. “These are serious allegations that should be fully and independently investigated; if any MDE employee is found to have purposefully engaged in covering-up these documents, they should be fired immediately. Minnesotans need to know the full story about MDE’s involvement in the largest fraud scandal in state history.”