Legislature may close loophole on misusing funds

Posted at 2:53 PM on March 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

While Congress was busy sending journalists scurrying to the thesaurus to find words to replace "outrage," a Minnesota House committee was tightening a rather glaring loophole: it's not illegal to misuse taxpayer money (insert the predictable joke here).

According to the Legislature's Session Daily:

Following a rash of recent scandals involving fraud and financial mismanagement at state agencies, Winkler wondered why the state employees involved were being fired but not prosecuted. It turns out that knowingly misappropriating state money is not actually a crime.

Under Rep. Ryan Winkler's bill, anyone who intentionally misuses state funds could be charged with a gross misdemeanor.

The bill was inspired by the case of Sonia Pitt, the former director of homeland security planning for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, who was AWOL when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, who charged over $14,000 in personal travel expenses to the state, and caused the state to pay over $11,000 for her use of cellphones, hotels, airfare, and unnecessary business travel, according to an investigation by the Office of the Legislative Auditor.

Comments (1)

//Sonia Pitt, the former director of homeland security planning for the Minnesota Department of Transportation//

Thats quite a title.
Does MPR have a Department of Homeland Security planning?

I suppose if the Department of Transportation has a Director for Homeland Security other state departments would have the same positions?

Does Human Resources have this position available or better yet, the Department of Parks and Recreation have this position? Would the director of Homeland Security Planning for Parks and Recreation be incharge of protecting innocent civilians on running paths?

Im just curious as I didn't even know such a position existed in the first place for MnDot.

Posted by FWA Program | March 19, 2009 3:17 PM

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