Remember last year, when taxpayers got stuck with a $430,000 legal bill to prepare Gov. Tim Walz for a single congressional hearing? His administration hired outside lawyers to prepare him for a June 12, 2025 hearing. The public didn’t learn what the preparation cost until after the press dug into the records. American Experiment awarded the governor’s legal bill the 2025 Golden Turkey Award last fall after 53 percent of voters chose it.
Now taxpayers — who could once again foot the bill — are waiting to find out how much Walz’s second hearing prep cost.
On March 4, 2026, Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison returned to Washington to answer questions from the U.S. House Oversight Committee about fraud in Minnesota’s state programs. That same day, the committee released an interim staff report saying senior Minnesota officials — including Walz and Ellison — had known for years about widespread fraud involving federally funded social services programs.
According to Axios, the administration again hired K&L Gates to prepare Walz for the hearing. The news outlet filed a public records request for the invoices the next day, March 5.
More than seven months later, taxpayers still don’t know the price tag. Walz’s office told Axios in early September that it expected to respond to the request “within the next few weeks.” As of this writing (Oct. 8), the bill remains undisclosed.
The administration says it has been overwhelmed by public records requests since Operation Metro Surge. It also says it has produced three times as much data this year as it did last year.
But getting records out of this administration has been “extremely slow and cumbersome” since Walz took office in 2019 and pledged to prioritize transparency, according to Matt Ehling, president of the Forum for Constitutional Rights.
Without timely access to public records, Ehling told Axios, “government can continue to do whatever it is doing without the public really understanding what’s happening until it’s too late.”
Minnesota’s open records law only requires requests to be handled in an “appropriate and prompt manner” and doesn’t set a firm deadline. That “flexibility” has turned into months or even years of journalists and others waiting for records, points out Axios.
American Experiment had to sue the Minnesota Department of Education to get a straightforward data request processed. And when the Minnesota State Board of Investment finally responded to an American Experiment request six months later, the response still didn’t include all of the requested numbers.
A $430,000 bill to prepare a former 12-year congressman for a hearing was not a good look for the Walz administration. The silence so far about the next bill isn’t helping its transparency record.
Maybe the invoice will turn up in time for this year’s Golden Turkey voting.