House Testimony: Hundreds of Minnesota Autism Centers Unlicensed.

Summary

Podcast Summary: Garage Logic — House Testimony: Hundreds of Minnesota Autism Centers Unlicensed

Date: February 25, 2026
Host: Garage Logic (Gamut Podcast Network)
Guests: Representative Patty Anderson, Jay Kolls, Kenny
Main Theme: Explosive testimony and revelations about widespread fraud and lack of oversight in Minnesota's autism centers, specifically those serving under the unlicensed EIDBI (Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention) program, with implications for state policy, the future of Medicaid waivered services, and families affected by autism.

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1. Episode Overview

This episode dives into recent testimony at the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, focusing on alarming findings that hundreds of autism centers in the state have operated without licenses. The Garage Logic crew explores the roots and scope of the problem, its impact on families, systemic failures in oversight, and legislative efforts to address the crisis. Special attention is given to the voices of affected parents and advocates, as well as insights from Representative Patty Anderson, vice chair of the House Fraud Committee.

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2. Key Discussion Points and Insights

A. The EIDBI Program and Fraud Exposure

• What is EIDBI?
  Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention, essentially referring to autism centers (01:13–02:13).

  "EIDBI was created as an unlicensed program giving them less barriers to entry and fewer standards as businesses." — Kenny [03:59]

• Stunning Lack of Oversight:
  EIDBI was set up with minimal regulation, resulting in hundreds of unlicensed autism centers vulnerable to fraud.

  "You could set up these autism centers with very little oversight. That's basically what it boils down to." — Jay Kolls [04:43]

• On the Numbers:
  According to testimony, there were about 500 autism centers, with only 6 actually applying for a license after it was recently required (20:46–21:44).

B. Human Impact: Parents and Advocates Speak

• Brad Trahan, Parent and Advocate:
  The father of a 25-year-old autistic son, his testimony stressed the lived experience and desperation of families.

  "We live every day fighting for services. We have been knocked down before, but we never get knocked out. We demand transparency, we demand reform, and we demand that those responsible answer for what happened." — Brad Trahan [07:44–08:09]

• Nathan Olson, Advocate:
  Emotional testimony about an acquaintance denied services, who ended up homeless for eight months.

  "Where was the accountability then? ... This autism person went homeless for eight and a half months. Do you know how cold it is in the state of Minnesota?" — Nathan Olson (via Kenny) [09:20–09:44]

• Hosts’ Reflection:
  The hosts emphasize that beyond the billions lost to fraud, the focus needs to stay on real people being denied essential services.

  "It's so easy to forget about the real people who've been affected and can't get the services they need." — Jay Kolls [09:44]

C. The Scale and Mechanism of Fraud

• Shocking Statistics:

  • 80–90% fraud rates in multiple Medicaid waivered programs, including autism services and housing stabilization.

    "80%, 80 to 90% of the autism centers, that whole thing is fraudulent." — Representative Patty Anderson [15:35]

  • Only six out of 500 autism centers sought licensing after requirements changed; 100+ centers have shut down.

    "Only six autism centers in the entire state out of the 500 ... have actually applied for a license." — Rep. Anderson [21:44]

• Why So Easy to Defraud?

  • Programs were set up as "waivered services" — optional Medicaid programs with minimal requirements.

  • Regulatory culture emphasized "compassion over compliance," resulting in minimal enforcement.

    "As the Department of Human Services, we emphasized compassion over compliance. That's a bit disturbing." — Kenny [02:47]

  • Many centers staffed by unqualified workers:

    "The actual physical services are provided by 18 and 19 year olds in many cases...with no education...is that legal?" — Rep. Anderson [22:32]
    "It's a joke. You know, it's harder to get a driver's license, basically." — Rep. Anderson, on the new provisional licensing [20:57]

  • Centers could be run by absentee owners, sometimes living in other states, in charge of multiple facilities (25:21–26:03).

• Site Inspections:

  • 300+ site visits in the past year (notably, visits were announced in advance).
  • Outcomes: 54 providers closed, 18 terminated, 102 open investigations, 37 active payment suspensions [26:36–27:12].

• Failure of "Unannounced" Oversight:

  "I found that also...unannounced visits were not required...I just found that crazy. How do you monitor them? How do you audit them?" — Jay Kolls [28:16]

D. Legislative and Administrative Response

• Governor's Role and the Battle Over Reform:

  • Debate over who should appoint the Inspector General (OIG) for oversight — the governor vs. a bipartisan legislative group.

    "The governor wants to just choose whoever they want. The governor does." — Rep. Anderson [36:08–36:09]

  • Reform bills in progress; attempts by some lawmakers to dilute ("gut") the proposed OIG independence (32:56–33:01).

  • Big, Beautiful Fraud Report (by Judge Tim O’Malley): A highly referenced roadmap for reform. All agree its recommendations, if enacted, would eradicate 95% of fraud.

    "If we implement that...95% of this fraud is going to be gone...It's fixable with the culture shift and with the desire to do it. We just have to force people to do it." — Rep. Anderson [49:09]

E. Systemic, Cultural, and Historical Roots

• How Did We Get Here?

  • The system’s weaknesses go back decades, with the framework for fraud established as early as the 1970s, failing to evolve as programs boomed, especially during COVID-19 (11:11–12:07, 44:07).

  • The hosts and guests stress a profound culture and ethics problem in state government and highlight insufficient federal guardrails (44:28–45:33).

• Risk to Legitimate Services:
  If fraud isn’t rapidly cleaned up, there’s a real chance waivered-service programs (including autism and housing stabilization) could be eliminated — harming those with genuine need.

  "Unless this gets cleaned up and really cleaned up...there's going to be a push probably to get rid of this program and others..." — Rep. Anderson [40:22]

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Program Vulnerability:

  "You could set up these autism centers with very little oversight. That's basically what it boils down to." — Jay Kolls [04:43]

• On the Human Toll:

  "We have been knocked down before, but we never get knocked out. We demand transparency, we demand reform, and we demand that those responsible answer for what happened." — Brad Trahan [07:44–08:09]

• Numbers that Shocked the Panel:

  "Only six autism centers in the entire state out of the 500...have actually applied for a license." — Rep. Anderson [21:44]

• On Absentee Ownership & Qualifications:

  "They actually can run, like, 10 of them, by the way...that person doesn't even live in Minnesota." — Rep. Anderson [25:21–24:20]
  "It's a joke. You know, it's harder to get a driver's license, basically." — Rep. Anderson [20:57]

• On Oversight and Culture Change:

  "If we implement that [O’Malley’s report]...95% of this fraud is going to be gone. It's fixable with the culture shift and with the desire to do it. We just have to force people to do it." — Rep. Anderson [49:09]

• On State’s Effort and Slowness:

  "The wheels of good are turning, but it's very slowly." — Kenny [27:16]

• Summing Up the Absurdity:

  "I'm just thinking, when you set up something like that, if the state is overseeing something like that, isn't there a bunch of people sitting in a room going, wait, what? Time out, wait. We're not going to have them licensed. We're not going to do mandatory visits?" — Jay Kolls [56:36]

• On Legislative Reality:

  "But there's a. Where there's a will, there's a way. So I think...there'll be some of it done this year...A lot of this can be done just through the administration..." — Rep. Anderson [51:17–51:58]

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4. Timestamps for Key Segments

• EIDBI, Overview & Shock over Licensing (01:01–05:44, 19:51–21:44)
• Powerful Testimony (Parents/Advocates): Brad Trahan, Nathan Olson (07:44–09:44)
• Fraud at Scale—The Numbers & Licensing Gaps (15:07–16:38, 20:46–21:44)
• Problems with Oversight, Qualifications, Absentee Owners (22:32–26:24)
• Site Inspections and Initial Closures (26:27–27:12)
• Unannounced Visit Policy Flaws (28:08–29:51)
• Debate on the Inspector General's Independence (30:21–39:44)
• Threat of Eliminating Programs (40:22–41:44)
• Ethics, Culture, and Federal Role (44:07–45:33)
• Big, Beautiful Fraud Report & Path Forward (49:03–51:06)
• Listener Outreach — Whistleblowers Encouraged to Come Forward (53:01–54:15)

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5. Flow & Tone

The episode is brisk and irreverent but deeply engaged with the subject matter. The hosts mix humor ("Why am I trying to live from paycheck to paycheck when I could be doing that?" — Kenny [25:49]) with incredulity at the systemic failures. The tone is often incredulous and frustrated but hopeful due to new oversight efforts and reform momentum. The inclusion of real-world testimony grounds the episode emotionally and highlights the stakes for vulnerable Minnesotans.

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6. Conclusion & Takeaways

Garage Logic exposes a staggering fraud crisis in Minnesota's autism services system, marked by regulatory negligence, massive fraud, and heartbreaking impacts on families. Legislative reforms—if swift and robust—could finally bring accountability. The episode urges vigilance, real oversight, and a focus on both fiscal stewardship and compassion for those truly in need.

Memorable Final Line:

"Minimal effort, maximum glory. Once again, that's what we did for the week." — Jay Kolls [59:04]

Transcript

[Representative Patty Anderson]

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[Kenny]

Make sure we're rolling on everything.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah.

[Kenny]

J. Cole.

[Jay Kolls]

Kenny, we're back.

[Kenny]

I can't believe how many things have happened just in the last few days this week alone. First of all, Shereen Gandhi has been appointed as the new commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services. She was serving that role temporarily. Yep, it's now her job. The big, beautiful fraud report has been released. And I dare, I dare the listeners to try to read it and stay away. And then there was a house meeting on Monday morning concerning fraud in the EIDBI program. Now, Jay, I did this quiz with the Garage Logic Boys, and I'm going to quiz you and I, you better know the answer. What does EIDBI stand for?

[Jay Kolls]

I used to know.

[Kenny]

Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention. Now, the second part of the quiz, what does that mean?

[Jay Kolls]

It just means Autism Center.

[Kenny]

Yeah, Autism. Okay, so you got it half right.

[Jay Kolls]

Well, I used to know what that EDD BBBI was. I used to know.

[Kenny]

I know, right?

[Jay Kolls]

You read it and you go, oh, I got to remember that. And then you're like, no, we're just talking about autism and autism centers. We don't need to know that.

[Kenny]

So I went to. Thanks to you. You. You sent the link to all of us to the House of Representatives, this meeting. House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight. This meeting on Monday morning. Yeah. And Jay, the problem is, while this. I was watching this, which is painful to watch, I also had Beavis and Butthead on. On one of the monitors. And I gotta tell you, Beavis and Bunhead won out a number of times, but I was able to take A bunch of notes. And the notes. We've been waiting for this big, beautiful fraud bill for a while. That was Monday morning. Number of things, before we talk about the meeting in this bill, this thing that we read, some things that really surprised me, that we as the Department of Human Services emphasized compassion over compliance. That's a bit disturbing. There's also allegations that state employees were instructed not to pursue suspicious activity that jumped out at me and other employee fraud prevention efforts that may have been impeded. It was hard to miss that in the report.

[Jay Kolls]

Yep. See, Even though those 57 page reports can be boring every now and again, if you just plow through it, all of a sudden you get that you

[Kenny]

really have to buckle down.

[Jay Kolls]

You gotta buckle down, buckle up.

[Kenny]

You can't have Beavis and Butthead.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Nope.

[Kenny]

And then all of a sudden it's full concentration.

[Jay Kolls]

You get those little lines like that, Kenny, that jump out at you. Right?

[Kenny]

So, yeah, this meeting on Monday. So EIDBI was created as an unlicensed program giving them less barriers to entry and fewer standards as businesses. And of course, just when you say that alone, it's like, wait a minute, that does not sound, that does not sound right.

[Jay Kolls]

See, this is where you're smarter than most and you don't give yourself nearly enough credit.

[Kenny]

Well, I mean, just you read that, you go, wait, wait a minute, read that.

[Jay Kolls]

Right. Yep. That's what you do. I'm usually sitting on the pot at home, right, Thinking about things. And that's when I go, wait. And I got to read it three times.

[Kenny]

Yeah.

[Jay Kolls]

Because I'm like, well, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, so maybe I'm not reading it correctly.

[Kenny]

Exactly.

[Jay Kolls]

This can't be right. Because essentially what you're saying, Kenny, is they call them non wavered programs. This autism program is one of them. Which means, believe it or not, you could set up these autism centers with very little oversight. That's basically what it boils down to. So when you read that one line, you think to yourself, well, that can't be.

[Kenny]

No, that's wrong. That's a misprint.

[Jay Kolls]

That doesn't even make sense.

[Kenny]

The good news is Joe all. Or Joe, I'm sorry, you're joking. Joe's the other guy. The good news is all of that has changed. Correct. And we're going to talk about that more and more. But you pulled a bunch of cuts. We don't have the video, but we have the audio. These cuts of what went on in the meeting, starting with. And this is what I Love. Starting with the regular guys, the everyday folks, the real people and how it's affected, affected them. And you can do the setup for these. It's really good.

[Jay Kolls]

You know, Kenny, as you and I were talking, as we do, you know, figuring out what direction we wanted to go today to talk what we wanted to talk about, I watched this meeting once and I had to watch it through a second time to pull the sound that I wanted. I can tell you it was, for me, it was eye opening. I learned a bunch of stuff in here that I did not know that can help you understand how you could get to a program like this that might have 80 to 90% fraud in it. And one of the things I learned is what you touched on. I didn't realize this. It's because it's a waivered program, like for example, licensing. And we're going to get into this. The vice chair of the House Fraud Committee, Representative Patty Anderson, is going to join us here in a couple of minutes to talk about this and explain some of this. There's like 500 autism centers that did not require even a license. That kind of stuff just jumped out at me. So I'm watching the House Fraud Prevention Committee. I just shorten it up by calling it House Fraud Prevention Committee. And I'm gonna play a bite for you and the audience. Two bites, in fact. The first one is the father of an autistic child. Because we talk a lot about the nine plus billion dollars in fraud, taxpayers getting ripped off, and I think sometimes we forget. We don't mean to, but we're forgetting that people who need these services desperately can't get them in some instances because of the fraud. Now this father, his name is Brad Trahan. Brad has a 25 year old. His son is now 25 years old. They rely on this autistic therapy for survival. For survival, right. That's how he described it. And he also is an advocate on the Minnesota Autism Council and as well. So he's well steeped in what this means to families and particularly families like his. So what we're going to hear from now is Brad Trahan talking about what this means for his family and how the state and state leaders have failed him and his son.

[Kenny]

The money's gone. Accountability is all we have for parents and individuals with autism. Accountability is not political, it's personal. We live every day fighting for services. We have been knocked down before, but we never get knocked out. We demand transparency, we demand reform, and we demand that those responsible answer for what happened.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Because the individuals and families who rely

[Kenny]

on these services as well as taxpayers, deserve nothing less.

[Jay Kolls]

So there you could hear in his voice, and if you watch the video, you can see in his face an angry father of an autistic child.

[Kenny]

We need more of this. We need our representatives and our senators on both sides of the aisle and to be faced with Minnesotans on a regular basis.

[Jay Kolls]

Correct.

[Kenny]

And the next guy you have, Nathan Olson. I really love him because he's, you know how crabby I am all the time. Nathan is my new best friend.

[Jay Kolls]

Nathan was more than crabby.

[Kenny]

Yeah. Set him up.

[Jay Kolls]

And again, to your point, more real people. And these are people who were testifying before the House Fraud Committee on Monday, so there was at least a committee listening to them. You heard from Brad Trahan, a father. This is Nathan Olsen. Excuse me. He's a disability advocate. He's a citizen lobbyist. He does a lot of work up at the Capitol. You've probably seen him a time or two before. He mentioned that he knew of at least one woman who needed help with her autism, needed autistic services, didn't get it, and ended up homeless for eight months. And this was Nathan's message to lawmakers on Monday.

[Kenny]

Where was the accountability then? When were you going to tell the

[Jay Kolls]

Fraud Oversight Committee that this autism person

[Kenny]

went homeless for eight and a half months? Do you know how cold it is in the state of Minnesota? It was cold in January.

[Jay Kolls]

Governor Walz doesn't care what's happening to the American citizens.

[Kenny]

What he only cares about is fighting ICE and blaming Trump. This needs to stop.

[Jay Kolls]

Now. There's a guy who says, I know somebody personally who, who ended up on the street because of the autism fraud. And I wanted to play that for the listeners, the viewers, anybody that tunes into our podcast. Kenny. Because, again, it's so easy to forget about the real people who've been affected and can't get the services they need. And I thought, let's give them some do. Let's give them some props. Let's play a couple of their sound bites and let people hear their frustration.

[Kenny]

And he's going after walls, and that's fine. I don't mean this to be an attack on the governor, but my beef with him is stop playing politics when real people, their lives are being ruined by this.

[Jay Kolls]

Correct.

[Kenny]

And that's why I'm so angry about it.

[Jay Kolls]

And I think he, you know, I think he chose walls. Didn't mention walls. Right there. Because he's the governor. Right. And he's gonna direct it at Somebody. But as we've discussed on this show with other guests, it's more than just, you know, landing at the governor's feet. This is more than just a problem for Governor Walz. If you want to. There's previous governors that could.

[Kenny]

Well, this fraud, was it really steamrolled during the Pawlenty administration?

[Jay Kolls]

Yes.

[Kenny]

You know, and like I think it actually says in the big beautiful fraud report that this started a long time ago.

[Jay Kolls]

Yes.

[Kenny]

And of course, we have frequently quoted David Schultz's piece in the Minneapolis Time Times, which is a website, and that report or his article really spelled things out 100%.

[Jay Kolls]

And if you notice you're referencing that big beautiful report, that's from Judge Timothy o', Malley, who's the former FBI guy, former BCA superintendent, now former judge who does work for this company called Waypoint, but he's now the director of the Office of Program Integrity appointed by the governor. He issued this 57 page, as he called it, Roadmap Right to Defeat Fraud and get their arms around it. And I think he even mentioned decades in that report, did he not? He goes back decades. And I think at one point he might have even said five decades. Which gets back to what Professor Schultz said in his piece. He said it all kind of started to happen, not the fraud per se, but in the 70s. The foundation and the framework which was not put together very well is what eventually led to what happened in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, and then really mushroomed during COVID Cause we had all these new programs coming in with COVID as well. So.

[Kenny]

So we're hoping that Patty can be joining us.

[Jay Kolls]

Patty Anderson.

[Kenny]

She's a representative from District 33A. That's Hugo Forest, Lake Matamidi and Delwood. And she is the current co chair for the House Fraud Prevention Committee.

[Jay Kolls]

She sent me a text saying she's here.

[Kenny]

Okay.

[Jay Kolls]

So she must be with us.

[Kenny]

We just heard you've got a bunch of quotes from her. Should we run those or.

[Jay Kolls]

No, I'm going to run them and then have Patty respond to them. Okay. So she can give us a little more explanation of what they are.

[Kenny]

Let's just say hi to Patty. Hi, Patty.

[Jay Kolls]

Hi, Representative joining us.

[Kenny]

Oh, we can't hear you.

[Jay Kolls]

Can't hear you on your end. Does she have a mic? You have a mic, Patty?

[Kenny]

We usually save this kind of stuff for off the air.

[Jay Kolls]

Patty, we got an engineer checking out something here for a second. Gabe just left. He's trying to figure something out, so hang in there.

[Kenny]

Yeah, is Gabe there?

[Jay Kolls]

Gabe Just went out of the room. He's got Reavers. And we got Reavers coming in here trying to figure out what our technical problem is.

[Kenny]

All right, why don't we just pause for a second? Yeah, we can pause and we'll come back when we get Patty lined up.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, we'll get Patty. Oh, there she is. Wait, we hear you, Patty.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Can you hear me, too?

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, we got you.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I can see you guys. Okay, perfect.

[Jay Kolls]

Okay. For those who don't know, joining us, Representative Patty Anderson, Vice Chair of the House Fraud Committee. Patty, before you joined us, Kenny and I played. I played two sound bites from the father of the autistic child, Brad Trahern and then Nathan Olson. Because sometimes we forget about the people who aren't getting these services, be it autism, feeding our future hungry kids, daycare centers, children needing daycare. There's a lot of real victims out there. I thought there was some pretty powerful testimony on Monday, and it was an eye opening committee hearing because I learned things I didn't know on Monday.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, I heard you. Actually, I was on in the background so I could hear, and I remember their testimony. And you know, the saddest thing about all of this fraud is the fact that people that need the services aren't getting the services.

[Jay Kolls]

How much is the autism program for these autism centers? How much is money is involved from the state? Do you know off the top of your head? Is it 100 million?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I don't know off the top of my head, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Jay Kolls]

Hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the first sound bite I want to play from you, Patty. That was in the committee meeting. You are.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I don't think you need.

[Jay Kolls]

Oh, hold on a second. Before you hit that, Gabe, I think you're addressing the inspector general for DHS at the time, and you were referencing something that I found astonishing because I've had it told to me that the housing stabilization program is 90% fraud. And then you say this in this sound bite that we're going to play.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I don't think you need to worry about a roadmap. The roadmap has been out there for years. It is, you know, we have hundreds and Hundreds and maybe 80% of these providers are fraudulent. And they all know how to do it. And it's been very, very easy for them to do it because there's been little to no oversight. And so I don't think you need to worry about that. You're gonna tell the fraudster something that they don't already know, because they already

[Jay Kolls]

know, obviously, 80%, 80 to 90% of the autism centers, that whole thing is fraudulent. Is that what you were referencing there?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Representative yeah. And that was a number that we got from Joe Thompson. You know, when. Cause this is one of the programs. It's on that list of 14 programs that's very, very high risk. So this isn't anything out of the blue. This is from the people who are actually investigating and prosecuting or were investigating and prosecuting all this fraud.

[Jay Kolls]

Because I'd heard 90% with housing stabilization. Right. And then when you mentioned 80 to 90%, I thought, okay, 80 to 90% of autism, too. So does that mean, and I know there are 14 programs that are considered high risk right now that they're looking at, but you look at those two. Representative, is it fair to say between autism and housing stabilization, 90% is fraudulent?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah. And Joe Thompson actually said 80 to 90% of all these 14 programs.

[Jay Kolls]

Of all 14, you know.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

All 14, right. And that's why they put them on this list. So it was these 14. And they're all waivered Medicaid services and they're all relatively new programs, you know, that were put out there. They're paid for generally, not totally, but with federal dollars, which is, you know, maybe the people administering this at the state are, you know, or people funding it at the legislature care a little bit less because, you know, it's not affecting our budgets as much, you know, so. No, it's, that's the number and it's incredible.

[Jay Kolls]

What does a waivered service mean?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

A waivered service is so Medicaid provides, you know, health care. Right. For generally disabled or low income folks. And it's just a regular box of services. No, normally, you know, you can go to the doctor, you can do this, you can, okay. But then what they have are these other things that are called waivered services. So they're, they're, they're programs that states can do optionally and some states do them and some states don't like the, the Housing stabilizations was a brand new program in Minnesota set up in Minnesota, and it was created by, by Minnesota through the legislature and with dhs. And the idea is that if you can provide medical services that maybe are cheaper somehow, okay, that in the long run from a healthcare cost, then Medicaid will allow you to do this new program and pay for it, and that's a waivered service. So the, the use housing stabilization, for example, when that was set up, it was projected to cost like a million and a Half right here.

[Jay Kolls]

I remember that. Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Okay. And it cost over 100 million. And it was, it's only been like five years. Right. So it was set up and, and it was argued that, hey, if we can have some healthcare providers and nonprofit groups, you know, help these people find stable housing, it will save money in the long run because they will have less health care issues. And so they sold that to the federal government, created what's called a Medicaid waivered service. And then there's a little bit of state money that goes in there and then it's the federal Medicaid money. So Minnesota has dramatically expanded their federal, their waivered services compared to other states. And that is where we are finding the majority of this fraud is in that.

[Jay Kolls]

That's what I thought when I looked at. When I started listening to the committee hearing, I'm thinking to myself, whatever this waivered service means, sounds like they're Talking about all 14 of these high risk programs have this, you know, they're non wa. They're non waivered or they're wavered services.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

They're not a normal. Not normal thing that's provided. Right. The things that Minnesota created legislatively.

[Jay Kolls]

Which then kind of dovetails into my next question over a next sound bite of yours that we're about to play. So it kind of jumped out at me, Kenny and representative, that there were 500 autism centers, if my notes are right, that do not require a license because they're one of these waivered services. Is that correct? Do I understand that correctly?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Kind of. So their autism centers, period, did not require a license because they're waivered?

[Jay Kolls]

Yes.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

All autism centers. And because that's the way it was set up when the state set up this program. That's how they set it up. Then last year, because of all this fraud, there was a effort to license these programs in the future. So they gave them until the end of May this year.

[Kenny]

Provisional license.

[Jay Kolls]

Provisional license, correct.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Provisional license, yeah.

[Kenny]

What does provisional mean? Temporary?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Well, it's like, can you fill out basic paperwork? You know, it's like there's only like five things they need to do. Right?

[Kenny]

Right.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

It's a joke. You know, it's harder to get a driver's license, basically.

[Kenny]

You need to.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

But it is.

[Kenny]

You need to prove.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Take a look at the stuff.

[Kenny]

So, yeah, you need to prove that your office meets the basic provisions to run a center. Right.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah. You also need to prove like that here's the owner. You have to give them, you know, who owns the place. Do I have a Physical location. Do I have one person on staff who's qualified for, to oversee this? That's. Those are the things. And Jay, if you look at, you know, the, the other stuff, some other things that were talked about in many cases in these autism centers. So, so they have to have one person that.

[Jay Kolls]

Oh, okay, let me get to that.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Medically.

[Jay Kolls]

Let me get to that.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I'll leave that.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, because here's the soundbar.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

But anyway, only six autism centers in the entire state out of the 500 that are left and 100 have already shut down since in the last year, you know, only six have actually applied for a license.

[Jay Kolls]

See, that's what was next in my notes leading to this soundbite that I was going to play. Again, a soundbite from you. Only six have applied out of the 500. So 500 who didn't need a license to begin with. Now Moving forward, over 100 have been closed down either voluntarily or by the state and only six have applied for licenses. And you said they're in this meeting minimal requirements for some employees to administer a Clare UP care plan for autistic parents. Right. So this is you asking DHS Inspector General James Clark about that.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

But the actual physical services are provided by 18 and 19 year olds in some many cases. And is that the way this program is set up? Is that legal that an 18 or 19 year old with no education and anything to deal with health care can actually provide these services? Or again, is it just one person? Is a kid clinic, clinical director or whatever? But they could be a director at multiple clinics, you know, but the actual services are provided by people that are wholly unqualified to provide health care services. Is that how this is Commissioner Gandhi, his response?

[Jay Kolls]

Chair Robbins, Representative Anderson. So the points you're making are very important.

[Kenny]

Right?

[Jay Kolls]

We too share those concerns that jumped out at me.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

You're asking yeah, the answer is yes.

[Jay Kolls]

Well, because you, you were, as I'm following this along, I was a little bit surprised that you could have 500 non licensed places and then only six have applied for a license, which speaks volumes. But then you can have someone who could be 18, 19 years old, fresh out of high school, whatever it would be at 18 or 19, have absolutely no training. They could go online apparently and just fill out something online and all of

[Representative Patty Anderson]

a sudden they can take a couple hour continuing ed thing or something.

[Jay Kolls]

A couple hours continuing ed and now they can administer or help execute care plans for autistic patients, correct?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yep, that's correct. So that's what these centers it's insane. So they need one licensed, one person who's a professional. Right. So. But that person doesn't in. In many cases doesn't even live in Minnesota. And I think. I can't remember the numbers. Chair Robbins had that number. It was like, 43 of these aren't even here. They don't even live here.

[Jay Kolls]

So you could. Can I interrupt you right here?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah.

[Jay Kolls]

And, Kenny, help me out here. If I'm following correctly.

[Kenny]

Let me give you an analogy.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Kenny]

When I have to fix something on my truck and I don't know how to do it, I go to the Internet. The Internet teaches me how to do it, and I do it. I think that's basically what's happening with these teenagers.

[Jay Kolls]

Right, Right. That's it.

[Kenny]

Let me look that up.

[Jay Kolls]

Get right back to you. In the meantime, the state. The state's paying my salary, so, Representative, you can have the one licensed person who maybe owns and operates and runs this place. Right.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

They actually can run, like, 10 of them, by the way.

[Jay Kolls]

Okay. Yeah. And you mentioned that in the committee, that one person can be in charge of 5 to 10 centers. So this was this way. When I say this was kind of eye opening and eyebrow raising, this committee hearing. It really was. Right. So. And then they wonder how the fraud happened. Well, you don't. And if you own five or ten of those centers, Kenny, you don't even have to live in Minnesota or be here to be that person. Right.

[Kenny]

Am I right for a living? What am I doing? Why am I trying to live from paycheck to paycheck when I could be doing that?

[Jay Kolls]

We were not thinking, Kenny. We actually decided to work. But do I understand that correctly, Representative, that you can be honest with? Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

No, that's correct. Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

[Jay Kolls]

It can be absentee owners. Only one person holding the license that actually has some medical knowledge to do this, and they're not even here. And then the people in the autism center are. These could potentially be these kids who've taken two hours of a continuum course online. It's crazy to me.

[Kenny]

I have to bring up the fact that there is good news here.

[Jay Kolls]

What's that?

[Kenny]

They're working to change. And changes have already begun. So the state's been doing site visits, right?

[Jay Kolls]

Oh, yeah.

[Kenny]

I picked this up from the meeting. Or maybe it was the big, beautiful fraud report. I don't know where. I know it wasn't from the Beavis and Butthead I was watching. But listen to this. I wrote this down. This is in my notes. The providers that have willingly closed. And the providers that they have shut down are 338 visited, 54 providers closed, 18 terminated. Now listen to this. They still have 102 open investigations and 37 active payment suspensions.

[Jay Kolls]

Wow.

[Kenny]

So the wheels of good are turning, but it's very slowly.

[Jay Kolls]

Correct. I'm glad you pointed that out.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, they are. And so I have to give them credit for that now, just so you know, those 300 site visits were done last year and they gave them notice. So that's the problem.

[Kenny]

That's a huge problem.

[Jay Kolls]

But here's what's weird. But here's what's weird, and correct me if I'm wrong, Patty, I don't think under state law, they were required to do unannounced visits. Right. Didn't I hear that in testimony?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, they were not required because at that time they had not put them on the high risk list.

[Jay Kolls]

Yep.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

So they weren't required until July 1st of last year. Yeah. And now they're on the, you know, suspend it and let's. And they're all fraudulent, you know, list. So.

[Jay Kolls]

And so now they can do. On it. Now they can do the unannounced visits on them.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah. Yeah. But they haven't been doing it.

[Kenny]

Somebody would pick up the phone and say, hey, in three days we're gonna do an unannounced visit, so get your ass together.

[Jay Kolls]

Basically.

[Kenny]

Gee whiz.

[Jay Kolls]

Basically. I mean, I think they were giving them 24 hours notice, but I found that also. I did not. I didn't know this until I watched the committee hearing that unannounced visits were not required. I just found that crazy. How do you monitor them? How do you audit them? How do you do anything if you're not visiting? Right. I don't get it.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah. And that's been the problem. If you look at the daycare fraud and I mean, the feeding our future fraud. Really? I mean, go back to that. Right. So they're saying they're serving, you know, 2, 000 kids a day meal, and yet you can't drive over there and realize that there's nobody there. Right.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

The place for 24. Okay. So that's been the problem with all of this stuff is that they're not, you know, nobody's overseeing it. They're just writing checks. And. And if you look at the. The thing that o' Malley did, the big beautiful fraud.

[Kenny]

Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

It's actually very good. I was. I was impressed with his work. But he says not only should you be doing unannounced site visits. You should be able to go to that site at any time and say, give me your records. The, the records need to be on site and say, I want to see these records for this day, for this kid right now. And. And if they're not able to do that, they should be immediately suspended. That's what Omaley's reports that completely agree with them, you know, and if you do that, every one of these fraudulent companies will be gone, everyone, overnight, because, you know, they're not going to be able to provide that.

[Jay Kolls]

So something as simple as that could have maybe prevented a lot of this if we would have just had unannounced visits demanding records on site. It just wasn't happening. And as Kenny calls OMalley's report, the big beautiful. What do you call it? The big beautiful fraud report. Correct. It has actually got some interesting things. Oh, the other thing that jumped out at me too, that was really interesting. He was adamant, it seemed to me, because I watched the news conference as well, and his voice and tone was, we need an independent office of Inspector General. Yeah, that's what he said.

[Kenny]

I'm glad you brought that up.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

And, you know, that's the bill I've been working on for over a year

[Jay Kolls]

with Gustafson

[Representative Patty Anderson]

and the whole team. So we've been trying to. We had House File 1 on our side and the Senate had her bill, and we've been working since January of last year to merge these bills together.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

And ours got stalled and staked up by. By the other party, but I had been amending house file 1. She had been amending her bill as we went through different committees. In the end, she did not get stalled and it passed, you know, 60 to 7 in the Senate.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, we had her on three weeks. We had her on three weeks ago on the show.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah.

[Jay Kolls]

Because we came up.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yes, she's done a fantastic job.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, she really has. And Kenny and I had come across some minutes from this new, I call it the anti fraud dream team of Governor Walz, the OIG Compliance Coordinating Council. Excuse me. And in those minutes, there was language that Kenny and I picked up on that said, you know, a workable solution versus the Gustafson bill. This is before all of a sudden we found out that we couldn't figure out what the workable solution was. Heather joined us on the show. Then we later the next week, we found out what that workable solution was.

[Kenny]

Yeah. As soon as you guys went into session, what was it? Three days later.

[Jay Kolls]

Yep.

[Kenny]

It got killed.

[Jay Kolls]

It Was. Well, it was where they were trying to gut it. Remember they were trying to kill it.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, they tried to gut it. So it's not dead. I still have hope that we're going to get a pass the guts.

[Kenny]

How will that.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Kenny]

How does that work getting it passed?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Well, so right now technically the companion of Gustafson's bill is not House file one. Okay. Because they weren't dropped at the same time. It's the bill that Norris has which he never even had a hearing on last year. He didn't even do anything with it. But now we're pushing it, you know, so it's kind of weird because he's the chief author but yet me mostly but I'm the one pushing his bill. So you know, and coming but you know, he's still working on it. So three times it's come up for a vote. So what hap. What we, what happened is that Gustafson's language was. Was put onto his bill automatically because it had passed in the Senate because his, the language of his originally was the old, you know, bill before all the negotiations. So he tried to bring an amendment to that bill last week in State Gov to gut. Completely gut the bill.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah. It's called a DE amendment, right? A DE amendment.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, it was a. Delete all of.

[Jay Kolls]

Delete all.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, yeah. Delete everything DE and then we tried to bring up Gusa since bill on the floor a couple days later last week that didn't work. Failed at a party line vote. Then yesterday. What's today? I don't even know what day it is. Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday night or. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, recently we, we tried to. We brought up his bill again in state Gov. But we did it what from a Republican chair when it was our turn and we did. Norris did have some amendments and he had a couple that were very simple that we took. Like changing the dates and that sort of thing. Yeah, not the DE and we put them on but then it got voted down again in stake of on a party line vote. In the meantime our group is getting back together. So the way we were able to do this last year was we met at least once a week for hours, House and Senate, both parties. Gustafson, you know, on the Guston, we can call it the Gustafson bill because she's the one that got it across the aisle. Right. So and we're starting those meetings again not to change the bill but to make these little tiny tweaks like the date change. There's one little issue about some. Some data practices stuff. There's some other little ideas and so. But. But we don't want to allow the bill to get changed in the House unless all four parties agree, you know, because we don't want to kill this thing. Because we're not going to rewrite the bill. We've already done that, Negotiated it well.

[Jay Kolls]

And here's the thing, doesn't correct me if I'm wrong. Norris's bill would give the governor the authority to appoint correct the OIG inspector.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, it was several things. That was one part of it. The other part is it would remove the Enforcement division, the law.

[Jay Kolls]

My question would be for anybody up there, Governor would be, well, what's the. If you have the governor appoint the OIG and you take away the law enforcement component, what good is it then?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Is that it's not.

[Jay Kolls]

I'm not even trying to be a jackass here.

[Kenny]

No, that was. You're right, Jay. That was the best part of it.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah. Why? Why. Why the opposition. Why the opposition to this bill? Why. Why is it so important to have the governor appoint. And this would not just be for Governor Walls. It's free for any governor moving forward. Why. Why are they so.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Why.

[Jay Kolls]

Why don't. Why don't they. Why don't they want that? I don't understand that. I mean, why do they want the governor in charge of that? Just to control the message.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yes. Well, somebody has to do the appointment, right?

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, but.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

So we created this committee that is actually bipartisan from both legislative bodies. Totally bipartisan, like the Audit Commission, that will interview and recommend people and then we'll let the governor pick one. They want to just choose whoever they want. The governor does.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, see, that doesn't.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

He also doesn't want the Enforcement Division. Yeah. You asked why. I don't tell you my opinion.

[Jay Kolls]

Now, what's your thought?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Don't deny it. Well, my opinion is that. That this is a threat to the Walls administration, you know, and. Because they're the ones that have allowed all this stuff to happen. Right. So we know from whistleblowers all over agencies, including in inspector general offices in the agencies. Okay. That they were shut down by the Walz administration. Okay. Between all the way up from the commissioners, all the way up to people that run the Walz offices. And they were stopped when they were. And it's in the report, in the big beautiful fraud thing. There's some of that discussion in there. But. But when are we going to have.

[Jay Kolls]

I'm sorry to interrupt again. When are we Going to hear from these whistleblowers, do you know?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Well, some of them have been public on the new on the news now. Some of them have done that. If you take a look.

[Jay Kolls]

I mean, are they going to testify? Are they going to testify or.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, some have. Some have. Nationally, mostly we see them on their, on their Twitter feed.

[Jay Kolls]

Okay.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

You know, you probably follow that and they've been doing that for years and they actually are very legit. And those people are real and they work.

[Kenny]

Yeah. Have you seen that feed, Jay?

[Jay Kolls]

People have shown me in the newsroom because I stay off Twitter.

[Kenny]

Yeah. It's fascinating.

[Jay Kolls]

I'd like to get one of them on this show. How do I find one of those?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Well, they might be willing to. I mean, you know, they were, they're just, they were very scared. Scared.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I understand jobs and you know, and now. And I know that they're talking to the feds now they're talking to the, the U.S. attorney's office.

[Kenny]

In your case, in your case, Jay, they usually find you. So just answer your phone when it rings. But back to the, back to the governor appointing. It really gives a bad. It. The word is optics. Bad optics. It makes it look like the governor wants to be in charge and that the person is going to be answerable to him. That's the way it seems to a layperson like me.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah. Same here. As somebody who covers. Just doesn't make any sense to me. But, you know, what do I know?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

And o' Malley talked about that in his press conference. You know, if you watch his whole press conference, he said we need an oh, I'm inspector general and they need to have independence. He said that.

[Jay Kolls]

And forcefully.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

And they need. Yeah, and he's absolutely right. And that's what we've been arguing, you know, so a lot of the debate, I think, you know, the House Democrats, that's been their thing, you know, and I, I would say they're covering for the governor. What I don't think the governor's office, when, when this bill passed the Senate last summer, this is when Malls was going to run again. Right. Too. They didn't like it because the final thing that was negotiated and that was fully negotiated with our party, you know, and had that law enforcement division and it had the way we appointed and so they don't like it. And that's when I think this thing died last summer, in May.

[Jay Kolls]

But if he's not dead. No, but if, and if he's not even going to be governor, he shouldn't care. Shouldn't care.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Right, right.

[Kenny]

Is it a legacy issue?

[Jay Kolls]

Maybe.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Maybe. Maybe that's it. I don't know.

[Jay Kolls]

Well, you all.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I'm trying to make that, you know, make the argument to Democrats that are still defending that, you know, why do you care what Governor Wallace, he's gonna be gone. Most of his commissioners are gonna be gone. Whoever the next governor is, no matter what party they are, they're gonna bring in their own people and they should.

[Jay Kolls]

True.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Because they're gonna spend their first two years in office. CLE Right.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah. It might take more than two. You also had another good soundbite that I wanted to play right toward the end of the meeting as it was wrapping up. And if we could just. Representative Anderson, at the end of the

[Representative Patty Anderson]

meeting, unless this gets cleaned up and really cleaned up, you know, and fast, there's going to be a push probably to get rid of this program and others like the housing stabilization and so on.

[Jay Kolls]

That was a pretty, pretty bold statement. You're basically saying if we don't fix it and fix it fast, what do you mean all 14 of these high risk programs could be gone? All 14 of them?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah. And remember. Well, first of all housing stabilization, the governor on his own shut it down. They finally gave up and they realized it's all fraud. And they said we're done. And there's been a bill that's already passed in, well going through committees in the House. I think it's already passed several committees and will pass. That actually just gets rid of the housing stabilization. Officially gets rid of it. Right. So but you know, there were autism services that were being provided before this autism program, this waiver program. So it's not like kids with autism weren't getting services, but they were getting them in a different way. Right. Through real medical providers, you know, not through these little centers, 19 year olds. And but it, but you know, that's been the negative of this is that when you know that most of the stuff is fraudulent, then the public is like, we shouldn't be paying for any of this stuff. You know, these are way. Right. So but there's going to be people that are harmed for that because there are people that legitimately could use whatever these services. Yeah. And so there's that, you know that and that's the trade. And so and I think that's why you're seeing, you know, for a long time around here in the Capitol, there was people on one side of the aisle were trying to deny that fraud existed and then defend the governor and use op ed. And when I say the governor, I'm talking about the administration, too, you know, and now you see less of that happening because they're realizing it's hurting people that they really care about from all of us, you know, and, you know, hurting these citizens is really horrible.

[Jay Kolls]

What's happened, I mean, in all your time up there and as state auditor at one time, have you ever seen anything quite like that? Where you're sitting, you're sitting in a committee meeting and you yourself, as a representative is saying, we could lose all these programs of the 14 that we're talking about. That's remarkable.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I've never. Yeah, yeah. And I've never seen this kind of fraud. And like you said, it's probably. There's been, you know, when you. When you look at the. The report that came out from o', Malley, he's talking about that there's been findings all the way back to the 70s, right. There were issues from the legislative auditor saying, hey, you got to tighten this up. You gotta take. Okay, but. But this, the. The level of this fraud, I mean, I can do is look at the dollars that have been spent. Spent. Right. And because that was a very small amount of money, and all of a sudden you've had this boom in programs since the COVID years, and especially since these medically wavered things were set up. And so that's where you've had this just explosion. And I think we've had some really bad actors that, you know, we used to have a really clean government in Minnesota, I believe, know, generally clean compared to states. And we had people that were ethical and honest. And, you know, if someone did something bad, we didn't tolerate it. Right. We were all, you know, they're out of. They're out if they did something bad. And. And that level of toleration has changed, you know, and there's more and more bad actors out there.

[Kenny]

A lot of baby steps along the way, starting in the 70s that got us to where we are. And I. I'm kind of amazed that we don't have a state treasurer. Do you think if we had a treasurer, would that make any difference? Would we have discovered this fraud earlier, or am I off?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

No, I mean, I. I was around when that was merged. You know, I mean, that was before I was state otter, but it was that year of that and that at. By that time, the treasurer's office was almost nothing. You know, they had 40 people at the most. And it was more. You know, it's. That's not the function. Right. So I think it's, it's not that. It's that you have programs. It's an ethics problem. Okay. It's a culture problem which o' Malley talks about heavily in his report. And, and it's an oversight problem that was actually created when the legislation was written.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

And. And the feds are also guilty in some of this. Right. The feds create. Allowed like the, you know, the feeding our. You know, the, the food program that, you know, we did.

[Jay Kolls]

Right.

[Kenny]

The floodgates opened when Covid hit.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yes. Yep, yep. And they let it all happen. And they let. They approved programs with no guardrails.

[Jay Kolls]

Well, that's the thing. How do you set up something representative where you could have 500 autism centers that aren't licensed, that don't require licensing. 500 and then you can have somebody own five to 10 of them to be the license holder who's not even here, not required to be here, and then just, oh, on top of it you can have an 18 or 19 year old executing the care plans.

[Kenny]

Yeah. And Jay, and then you. Things like you have to emphasize compassion over compliance.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah, right.

[Kenny]

They just throw that in, which to me is saying, yeah, they might be fraudulent, let it go.

[Jay Kolls]

And I get the compassion part, but you're not very compassionate if you let them walk out the door with hundreds of millions of dollars for people who need it. That's not the definition of compassion right there, is it? I mean, I get what they're saying, but it would seem to me good oversight and compliance is compassionate because now you're making sure those who need it get it. You see?

[Kenny]

Exactly.

[Jay Kolls]

So I just. Kenny, could you imagine if you and I established like this?

[Kenny]

So I wanted to bring this up. When the floodgates from the feds opened up with COVID Sushere, the guy I work with every day, said we should apply for money for our fake town that we call Garage Lodge Gumption County. And Yeah. And at the time we're all going shut up. Don't. It never happened. There's no way. Yeah. In hindsight we could have easily got ourselves a cool billionaire.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah. I mean, I mean even if you and I, Kenny, if I came to you and said, hey, we've got this opportunity to get into this line of profession and get a load of this. Kenny, we don't even need a license.

[Kenny]

No.

[Jay Kolls]

And you know what? We don't even have to live here. Kenny. We could wanna live in Florida while we run this autism center.

[Kenny]

Jay and Kenny's fraud shop.

[Jay Kolls]

Fraud shop. Kenny, Kenny, let's get A few of these and we'll go to Florida, we'll hold the license, and then we'll hire a bunch of 18 year olds to run it. I mean, when you stop. When I was watching that committee hearing and maybe I should have already known this Representative, but I did not know any of that. And that's what I said to Kenny. I sure would like to talk about this Wednesday. I had no idea it was that lax. I had no clue. I was astounded by what I heard.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah, most people don't. When they hear about it, they're floored. And what's frustrating is because you watch the DHS commissioner and the oig and I think they're trying now, but they weren't. Okay, so they've been trying like in the last six months maybe, but they actually think it's just fine and normal that there was no licensing and that they weren't making site visits, you know, because we asked them this a year ago. Why aren't you making safe. Why aren't you doing this? Well, they're not required. And, and you know, we just don't have the staff to go do it. I'm like, just drive by, you can see.

[Jay Kolls]

And then I could have said, hey, guess what, Kenny, they're never going to inspect our place. They're never going to come around you. And I would have been sitting there going, can we do this? Should we even. Are we allowed? We wouldn't even believe. We would not have it if we would have.

[Kenny]

Yeah. Known we need to learn how to do fraud.

[Jay Kolls]

It's just crazy to me.

[Kenny]

Representative, before you go, you got to give me something positive to hang my hat on. Just give me one thing that I can say. Okay. Okay, good. Anything.

[Jay Kolls]

Anything.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

You know, I'll go back to the great big beautiful fraud report because that is.

[Jay Kolls]

Kenny's just dubbed it.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

That's. If we, if we implement that, and some of that's legislative and most of it's within the administration, but if, if, if this governor or the next governor we actually implement that, 95 of this fraud is going to be on. And so it's, it's fixable with the culture shift and with the desire to do it. We just have to force people to do it.

[Kenny]

So I'm guessing that Tim o' Malley then has bipartisan support.

[Jay Kolls]

Guess we'll find out.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

He's not a political person. He's, you know what he, and he was very careful not to blame, you know, well, he blamed everybody. Right. So he even mentioned legislators that have done incredibly Unethical things which I had heard about, you know, and, you know, we're naming grants to their buddies and then pushing the administration to get the dollars out. Okay, so. So he blamed legislators. He blamed the administration.

[Jay Kolls]

Workers. He blamed workers, yeah.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

He blamed everybody. And everybody is responsible for something that got this far. It isn't just, you know, it isn't just one. But it's going to require a huge shift in culture. So most of which will have to be done by this administration or probably the next, frankly.

[Jay Kolls]

So let me ask you this, then. Kenny has a good question I want to follow it up with. So you're giving him a ray of hope here, as the saying goes. But to get how likely if you had to put a percentage on it, how much of that. What does Kenny call big, beautiful fraud report? How much of that do you think is realistically going to be adopted? Or, I mean, you know how it goes up there. It's going to devolve into some kind of a fight or a quarrel over something. Are you confident that most of it can be done?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I don't know yet. And I'm worried about time, I'll be honest. So we have a very short session. The revisor who writes these bills is already saying, if you don't have your stuff written now, you're going to miss deadlines. Right.

[Jay Kolls]

Okay.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

But there's a. Where there's a will, there's a way. So I think. My guess. And again, it's just came out. Right. So. But my guess is that there'll be some of it done this year. Okay. A lot of this can be done just through the administration, so we'll see what Walls is willing to do, you know, and I mean, if he's serious about trying to change what's going to be his legacy, you know, and try to make it, you know, like he helped stop. At least, you know, stop it and not. And maybe start healing and fixing it. Then they can do a lot of this in internally, you know, to the administration.

[Jay Kolls]

So.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

I don't know, Jay.

[Jay Kolls]

We'll see. Huh. Well, this has been fun. Thanks. I knew you could explain some of it to me, but I just also wanted to make sure I was hearing things correctly. When I watched that committee meeting, I was pretty surprised to hear some of that stuff.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yeah.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah. That's why I wanted to get you on Anytime.

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Have me on questions.

[Jay Kolls]

No, we'll keep tracking it. I really appreciate all the time. Thanks, Patty.

[Kenny]

Thank you so much, Jay. Let's take care. Let's take a quick Break.

[Jay Kolls]

All right.

[Kenny]

And come back and wrap it up.

[Jay Kolls]

Yabba dabba do.

[Kenny]

Okay, Jay, so the goal here is we've got to get those whistleblowers on. And if I remember right, and we might have to have Gabe join us on the microphone. This played out last fall, early winter, and their Twitter account was something like the employees of the Department of Human Services. And I think they were actually trying to address President Trump. You know, my memory's sketchy at best.

[Jay Kolls]

I don't remember who they were addressing, but I do remember when it all broke. Yeah.

[Kenny]

And then they got shut down for a while and then they came back. They came back after it was proven that they were legitimate.

[Jay Kolls]

Yep.

[Kenny]

It'd be a lot of fun to talk to one or more of those. How are they going to get a hold of you? Because here's the deal. Before you even do that, I had a sales guy that contacted me and he goes, geez, you guys got a lot of people listening. And I said, yeah. And virtually everybody at the Capitol and the government are listening to Crabby Coffee Shop.

[Jay Kolls]

Hard to believe, but.

[Kenny]

So I know these whistleblowers are listening. So they're gonna. One of them is gonna get a hold of you. We're gonna protect their identity.

[Jay Kolls]

If need be.

[Kenny]

If need be. How do they get ahold of you?

[Jay Kolls]

So the simplest way is my email, and that's just the initial J. Don't spell it out. J A, Y. Just the initial J. My last name, K O, L, L, S. No H in there. Otherwise I'd be on an island in the Bahamas. I wouldn't be working. So just the initial J, K o l, l [e-mail] k as in kitten, S as in Sam, T as in Tom, P as in Paul. K S, T, P dot com. And yeah, we'd love to talk. I'm going to make a point. I'm going to talk to some sources this next week and see if I can't find one of these whistleblowers to join us.

[Kenny]

It's kind of become the clearinghouse, the go to show for fraud, whether we wanted to or not.

[Jay Kolls]

It's like I said to you, Kenny, I'm like, you know, trying to be timely in what's happening week to week, day to day. Fraud is it for now, Right? It's fraud. The ice stuff, it's all front and center. You know, I'm with you. I'd like to have more women on who shoot bears from, you know, 30

[Kenny]

yards, you know, but funny you bring that up because I was just thinking about the evolution of this show.

[Jay Kolls]

Yeah.

[Kenny]

And when we first started, we were talking about things that doctors have had to remove from people's bottoms.

[Jay Kolls]

You did ask me or you did talk about that with what's your favorite

[Kenny]

state for strip clubs and other really stupid, stupid things.

[Jay Kolls]

But fun. Well, I like talking about those stuff.

[Kenny]

I had a hard time living with myself. Fraud. That's what I've always wanted Krabby to be. What it is right now.

[Jay Kolls]

And we're on it. And what I like about it, Kenny, is we're reacting. We have some proactive stuff. We're reacting to what's happening, but we've also had some proactive stuff. Right. Where we got out in front of a few things. And we'll continue to do that. I just think with this much money at stake, that many people who need these services, it's hard to ignore. And when I watch a committee meeting like this on Monday, and you're right, they're hard to wade through. Right. For an hour, an hour and 20 minutes.

[Kenny]

I'm telling you, you're killing me, brother.

[Jay Kolls]

But I learned, and this is why I took the time to do it. There were nuggets in there and soundbites from Patty in particular of things I had never heard before. Like 500 of these places and no licenses. Oh, and now they need a license and only six have applied. Which tells you what? The others, 494, were probably not legitimate. You could hire an 18 year old to execute the care plan.

[Kenny]

What in the world, Right?

[Jay Kolls]

You don't even have to be here. You could be in Florida running this. So when I started hearing all this in what can be a very dry committee meeting, I said to you, I go, kenny, we gotta talk about this. This is, to me, eye popping, eyebrow raising, jaw dropping type stuff. When you hear it. Cause you're talking about a program with over $100 million. That's why I was joking. Was you and Patty saying, kenny, we could have got together and said, how stupid are we?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Seriously?

[Jay Kolls]

We could have opened up one of these and lived in Florida and raked in. I'm just thinking when you set up something like that, if the state is overseeing something like that, isn't there a bunch of people sitting in a room going, wait, what? Time out, wait. We're not going to have them licensed. We're not going to do mandatory visits. We're not going to. We're going to let them have. But the whole thing was. It's changing now. But who said it? So I'M glad we did it, because our listeners and viewers, and however they catch our podcast, they don't have time to sit and listen to a 1:30, a Monday afternoon fraud meeting. Right. And we can. And then we can bring it to them and go check this out. Patty was great. I mean, she was kind of a voice of reason in that meeting. I thought so.

[Kenny]

Well, part of. Part of the problem in government is just simply eidbi. It's like they create these things to keep guys like me disinterested, isn't it?

[Representative Patty Anderson]

Yes.

[Kenny]

And then, you see, you find out what that stands for. Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention. And that's equally as bad.

[Jay Kolls]

Equally as bad. Just. Why don't we just say autism?

[Kenny]

Yeah. So guys like me go right to Beavis and Butthead. Right? Right away, we're done.

[Jay Kolls]

It's so true. In fact, when I saw it on the committee agenda, I couldn't remember what those initials stood for.

[Kenny]

No, I had to look it up, Jay.

[Jay Kolls]

I had to look it up. And then I went, oh, oh, I should listen to this committee hearing. They're talking about the autism centers. Once I figured out what the EDD BBBI thing stood for. And yeah, you're right. I mean, it's.

[Kenny]

You know what? We need to go to management, renegotiate our contracts, and we need. If we have to read those reports, we need to be paid by the word. Seriously. Or we should make them. We should make our management read so they know what we're going through.

[Jay Kolls]

I love how you've got a state representative who's vice chair of the House Fraud Committee, a former state auditor. She's now referring to the o' Malley report as the big, beautiful fraud report.

[Kenny]

Jay, we gotta go.

[Jay Kolls]

Oh, God, Kenny, you kill me.

[Kenny]

Gotta go.

[Jay Kolls]

Okay, well, I'm having fun. Can we hang around for another hour? No, we can't.

[Kenny]

No. Special thanks to Patty for joining us. That was awesome.

[Jay Kolls]

Very good.

[Kenny]

And thanks to everybody who's been listening more and more every week. We really appreciate you joining us here on News from the Crabby Coffee Shop. Jay, you have final word. Go ahead.

[Jay Kolls]

Minimal effort, maximum glory. Once again, that's what we did for the week.