# Wikiparency ### Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Minnesota and the 49-State Surrounding Area Wikiparency is a public record of how Minnesota's government spends, grades and protects itself, built almost entirely from documents the government wrote: statutes, session laws, audits, court records, agency reports, and filings in its own name. The project does not ask you to trust it. Every claim on this site is paired with a link to the primary source that supports it. If the link doesn't support the claim, the claim is wrong, and we want to know. --- ## Start with the state's own words > [!quote] Evidence layer > The entries below are what the documents say, nothing more. Each one links to the source. Our interpretation comes later on the page and is labeled. **The hiring statute.** An agency that misses its hiring goals "must justify its nonaffirmative action hires." : [Minn. Stat. § 43A.191, subd. 3(c)](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/43A.191) **How the justifications came out.** In calendar year 2016, "99% of non-affirmative hires were justified," according to the state's own biennial report. : [MMB Affirmative Action Report, FY2015–16](https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2017/mandated/170918.pdf) **The auditor on Feeding Our Future.** "MDE's inadequate oversight of Feeding Our Future created opportunities for fraud." : [Office of the Legislative Auditor, June 13, 2024](https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/2024/mdefof-sum.htm) **Who investigated the complaints.** "MDE inappropriately asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself." : [OLA summary, pp. 49, 51, 55](https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/2024/mdefof-sum.htm) **The growth curve.** Feeding Our Future went from about $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021. Its ringleader was sentenced to 500 months for her lead role in a $250 million scheme. : [IRS Criminal Investigation, May 22, 2026](https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/feeding-our-future-ringleader-sentenced-to-500-months) **Why enforcement stalled.** "Litigation threats and fear of accusations of discrimination, not legal or regulatory barriers, were repeatedly cited by state officials." : [House Committee on Oversight, *The Cost of Doing Nothing*, 2026](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/The-Cost-of-Doing-Nothing_How-Tim-Walz-and-Keith-Ellison-Fueled-Minnesotas-Fraud-Explosion_3.4.26_FINAL.pdf) **The regional government nobody elects.** Metropolitan Council members are appointed by the governor, and each "serves at the pleasure of the governor." : [Minn. Stat. § 473.123](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/473.123) **A null, published.** The Legislative Auditor "did not find evidence to substantiate the allegation" of $100 million a year in child-care assistance fraud. It did find that fraud was real and that controls were weak. : [OLA, *CCAP: Assessment of Fraud Allegations*, Mar. 13, 2019](https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf) That last entry cuts against a popular claim, and it's here on purpose. This project reports a finding whichever way it falls. --- ## Whose fraud? > [!abstract] Analysis layer > This section is our reading of the record above. Minnesota's fraud is **state fraud.** The state built payment systems that pay when someone attests and check almost nothing afterward. It routed money through favored intermediaries. When anyone tried to stop the payments, the state treated the accusation of bigotry as a reason to stop looking. Whoever stands in front of a system like that can rob it. The people charged are individuals, charged as individuals, and every one of them is presumed innocent until convicted. The ethnicity of the people claiming the money tells you the least. Blaming the newest and most visible group works as the state's alibi, because it points public anger away from the people who designed the machine. The machine is older than most of the people who got caught using it. That's why this site follows the architecture: the statute, the agency, the appointment, the audit that got answered with "met applicable standards," and the law that nobody has ever repealed. --- ## How the wiki is organized The site is built around the questions a litigator or reporter asks. Each section has its own hub page. | Question | Section | What's there | |---|---|---| | **Who** | [[Actors and Architects]] | People and institutions. *Architects* designed the rules. *Actors* hold office and carry them out. | | **What: the law** | [[Acts Amendments and Antecedents]] | Statutes, treaties, cases and founding instruments from 1837 to 2026, each linked to its authors and its year | | **What: the issues** | [[Actions At Issue Arguments]] | Ten regimes, the Dynamic Theories (T1–T15), and the federal actions between Minnesota and the United States | | **When** | [[Annals And Almanac]] | A decade-by-decade timeline from the 1840s to 2026, year pages, and a 366-day almanac | | **Where** | [[Area and Arena]] | Counties, cities, buildings and event sites, mapped | | **How much** | [[Agency Allotments]] | Agencies, nonprofits, unions and foundations, with their 990s, LM-2s, contracts and appropriations | | **Why** | [[Agendas and Appropriations]] | Stated purposes checked against where the money went | | **The record** | [[Addresses Advisories and Archives]] | What was actually sent to federal officials, and when | | **Analysis** | [[Analysis]] | Essays and interpretation, kept separate from the evidence | --- ## The collections - **[[County Series]].** Ten counties: Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Sherburne, Stearns, Washington and Wright. Each one has a county history, an "apex" dossier on the official whose stated principles can be checked against the record, a claims-exposure matrix, and a validation report listing the premises that failed research. - **[[The New Yankees]].** The apex trilogy: *Highly Commendable and Meritorious*, *Private Truths, Public Statutes* and *The Culture Is the Output*. It comes with a master source table of about 200 rows, and no sentence in the trilogy relies on a source that isn't in the table. - **[[One Escape, Nine Statutes]].** Minnesota's race- and sex-conscious contracting and certification provisions, taken one statute at a time. - **[[The Deck]].** Minnesota's election-challenge rules from 1857 to 2026, with a case library of the controlling opinions. - **[[Decade Files]].** Minnesota from the 1940s through the 2020s. Each decade gets a ledger that asks one question: what did this decade remove? - **[[Minnesota Government Directory]].** 554 state entities and all 87 counties, taken directly from official sites. A dash means the value wasn't found. We never guess. - **[[2026 Candidates]].** Both nominees in thirteen races, checked against their own stated commitments. Where the record showed nothing, we published a null result and invented nothing. - **[[Eleven Nations]].** The eleven federally recognized tribes in Minnesota and the treaty and statutory record behind each one. - **[[And the Kitchen Sink]].** 1,000 claim:link pairs from the hardest tier of the corpus: statutes, court records, audits and congressional record. It includes an appendix of the links that died. --- ## Why "the 49-State Surrounding Area" > [!abstract] Analysis layer Minnesota likes to think of itself as the center, so we measure it against everywhere else. That serves two purposes. First, Minnesota **exports**. The state has written models that other states and Congress adopted. Its 1991 "outcome-based schools" act was the country's first charter-school law ([Laws 1991, ch. 265](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/1991/0/265/)). The 1994 federal crime bill carried both the Violence Against Women Act and the Wetterling Act, two Minnesota-born models, in a single law ([H.R. 3355, 103d Cong.](https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355)). To follow waste, fraud and abuse to its source, you have to follow the models out of state. Second, and more important, comparison is the **control**. If you only look where you expect a pattern, you'll find it every time, and that proves nothing. A finding about Minnesota only counts when it has been checked against states that didn't build the same machinery. Sometimes Minnesota turns out to be ordinary. When we compared its business ties to China over fifty years with other states', Minnesota landed near the median. That result is published too. --- ## How to read what you find Every piece on this site is labeled with its form, so you know what it's trying to do: - **Claim : Link pairs** state one plain-prose claim and give one full-text link to the primary source. This is the base layer of the site. - **Dossiers and deep dives** are research memos. They record what the sources say, what they don't say, and which premises failed. - **850-word positioning pieces, 5,000-word steelmen and 12,000-word histories** are arguments at increasing depth. Each is fully footnoted. - **Killshots and Mailed Fists** are advocacy, and they don't pretend otherwise. Every blow has a footnote, and every footnote has a link. - **Validation reports and errata** are the project checking itself. **Sources we accept**, in priority order: government records, agency publications, non-news institutional documents, archives, academic works, and digitized books. **Sources we don't accept as evidence**: news articles and opinion pieces (unless the subject is the reporting itself), aggregators, unverifiable social media, and shortened URLs. **Rules we hold ourselves to:** - Private citizens are out of scope. - A charge is not a conviction. - No group carries collective guilt. - We don't arrange true facts so that they imply something the record doesn't show. - Public officials are judged by their own acts in their own offices. --- ## Corrections We date our errors and leave them in. Premises that failed research are printed as failures, and corrections are logged in place rather than quietly swapped out. If a link is dead or a claim overreaches, tell us and we'll post the fix with the date. This project argues that Minnesota grades its own work. Our practice is not to grade ours. Keeping that difference is what lets this site be handed to a hostile reader. --- *Wikiparency is a project of MTN, Minneapolis. Draft welcome page, September 18, 2026.*