Tom Tiffany on Friday laid out a Taxpayer Accountability Plan he said would force Madison to show where money goes after a string of grant and benefit scandals in Wisconsin and next door in Minnesota. The Eau Claire County stop came days after a plane emergency briefly took him off the trail. He tied the agenda to a $3 billion state surplus he wants returned to taxpayers.
The plan would audit state government for waste, fraud, and duplication; add the four Legislative Audit Bureau positions Gov. Tony Evers vetoed in the last budget, a cut Evers defended as saving $408,400 because he said the bureau already had enough staff; order the Department of Administration to run compliance reviews; require the Department of Health Services to use audit powers it already has; bring in outside technology to flag bad spending; modernize OpenBook Wisconsin; post public dashboards of agency spending and results; set response-time rules for open records; and restore a tracker of records requests.
“Wisconsin taxpayers work hard for every dollar they earn. Government should work just as hard to earn their trust,” Tiffany said. “We’re going to find the waste. We’re going to eliminate duplication. And we’re going to demand results for every dollar taxpayers send to Madison.”
He named Newcap in Green Bay and Medicaid and SNAP cases in Milwaukee as reasons the state cannot wait for the next bankruptcy. Newcap, a 10-county anti-poverty agency, took $13.9 million in government grants in 2024 and nearly $100 million over five years. An independent audit found a multi-million-dollar deficit and “substantial doubt” it could keep operating. The state put it under enhanced financial monitoring. The board sidelined CEO Cheryl Detrick, whose 2024 pay was about $240,000. The nonprofit shut down in March, filed for bankruptcy, and listed more than $4 million owed to more than 200 parties. Testimony to the Joint Audit Committee included an example of billing Medicaid $65 for each form a homeless person filled out. Committee members approved a broader audit of the WISCAP network in August. State agency heads told lawmakers they had not proven criminal fraud, only mismanagement, and that their systems often catch problems after the money is gone.
This month, a U.S. inspector general audit found Wisconsin DOJ awarded Freedom Inc., a Madison nonprofit, more than $630,000 in federal Victims of Crime Act and related funds and reimbursed about $516,000 without reviewing invoices first — contrary to the department’s own policy. Inspectors questioned $46,439 in costs, including contractor bills above the allowed rate and unsupported emergency-fund and supply spending. Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office said it is working with federal inspectors and the group to fix the findings. Freedom Inc. has received millions in state and federal grants over several years.
Minnesota is the cautionary tale. Federal prosecutors put the Feeding Our Future child-nutrition scheme at about $250 million. Founder Aimee Bock was sentenced this year to more than 41 years. In May, Justice Department officials announced charges against 15 people in Medicaid schemes they said targeted more than $90 million. A former federal prosecutor has said half or more of $18 billion spent since 2018 in 14 high-risk Minnesota Medicaid programs may have been stolen. Washington has frozen large Medicaid payments to the state. Tiffany argues that Wisconsin does not need to wait for a scandal that size to hire auditors Evers already blocked.
Tiffany’s plan is long overdue. It’s beyond time to track the money, show the public where it went, and eliminate the waste. Wisconsin does not have a revenue problem so much as a supervision problem. Adding the auditors Evers blocked, opening the books, and making agencies prove results is how a state treats taxpayers like owners, not ATMs. This accountability plan is how it starts.
