Before there was Feeding Our Future, before even the childcare subsidy scandal, there was Community Action of Minneapolis (CAM).
Community Action was a politically-connected “anti-poverty” nonprofit whose CEO (and his son) went to federal prison for defrauding the government in misspending taxpayer-funded grants of nearly $1 million. But the fallout didn’t stop with Bill Davis and his son Jordan.
It was another scandal where the Democrats in charge of the state government (in this instance, the state Dept. of Commerce) looked the other way while the fraud was happening. MPR New reported back in 2014,
Despite warnings, state kept cash flowing to controversial nonprofit
Sound familiar?
A reader reminded me of this 2016 Minneapolis Star Tribune column (paywall) by staff columnist Jon Tevlin. The headline,
Demise of Community Action of Minneapolis didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Tevlin wrote,
Numerous board members from both the public and private sector were either oblivious to rampant misspending or tacitly complicit. Several DFL heavies, including U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, state Sen. Jeff Hayden, Minneapolis City Council President Barb Johnson and former Council Member Robert Lilligren, served on the board through proxies.
Yes, it’s true. Community Action’s 2011 tax return lists then-U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MPLS) as a member of the board,
Apparently, Ellison couldn’t be bothered to attend the meetings himself and sent a proxy. Tevlin wrote in 2016,
Fay Harrison, the proxy for Ellison on the board. CAM improperly paid for $8,870 worth of work on her home. In a settlement, her son has offered to pay back $2,500, but so far has paid just $300.
Ellison’s spokesman, Brett Morrow, said that the congressman “has not been approached requesting that he pay Ms. Harrison’s bill, and does not intend to cover her obligations.”
It’s never his fault. Ellison’s proxy on the board helped herself to taxpayer dollars, but he’s never to blame. This is a career-long pattern with Ellison: his fraud-adjacent actions are never called to account. In a similar manner, Ellison (and his son Jeremiah) helped themselves to campaign cash from the Feeding Our Future fraudsters.
As Tevlin reported back in 2016, Ellison quit the CAM board when the scandal broke, rather than stick around and clean up the mess.
Typical.