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Minnesota is racing against the clock to avoid losing $2 billion in annual federal Medicaid funding after regulators rejected the state’s fraud prevention plan. On December 5th, 2025, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave the state 26 days to develop a corrective action plan to combat fraud. That plan was rejected less than a week after submission. On January 6th, CMS notified the state that it considered the corrective action plan deficient and intended to withhold the money until the state Department of Human Services met certain conditions. Minnesota officials say the reasons cited in the CMS decision letter were inaccurate and based on reports from 2019 and 2021, overlooking work Minnesota had been doing with the federal agency over the past year. While appealing the CMS decision, the state is also working with federal officials. A revised corrective action plan was submitted to CMS on January 30th to address the federal agency’s concerns. DHS now says it is requesting 168 qualified workers from across state agencies to help revalidate more than 5,800 Medicaid providers by summer, in an effort to persuade CMS to reconsider its decision. The state says the revalidation process is conducted regularly for all Medicaid providers, with DHS reviewing high-risk providers at least every three years. The process includes examining provider paperwork and billing records, followed by an unannounced site visit. The announcement says 5,800 individual providers in all of the state’s 87 counties will receive onsite inspections in the next few months. While there are already people in place who conduct the visits, others will be called on to help. Training for them starts this month. State investigators say roughly $9 billion in fraud has been committed against the state since 2018. A CMS review released this month of improper Medicaid payments found Minnesota’s error rate at 2.1%, well below the national average of 6.1%. The agency reviewed billing and compared payments to medical records to verify the actual services performed. DHS has identified 14 high-risk services and established a licensing moratorium on new service providers in those programs, discontinued the Housing Stabilization Services program, audited Autism Service providers, including onsite visits, implemented licensure for autism centers, disenrolled inactive providers, and begun enhanced pre-payment review before fee-for-service payments are made to providers in the 13 high-risk services.

The City of Little Falls recently announced they plan to test License Plate Recognition Cameras (LPR) from Flock Safety during a 60-day trial run. The cameras continuously scan license plates and vehicle features to match them against national hotlists for things like stolen cars and wanted suspects. Little Falls Police Chief Kyle Johnson says it will be like having extra officers on patrol. Johnson says the cameras only capture physical parts of the car, like make, model, and license plate. He says they do not take pictures of faces, personal identifiers, or pedestrians in the area: Johnson says there are also some strict access controls for the data, and an active case file has to be attached so all the data will be used strictly for investigative purposes. The plan is to start testing the cameras in May or June and then evaluate the data to determine if the city wants to purchase the system.

Ground Hog News: The groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Monday morning. That means we could see six more weeks of winter, at least according to Groundhog Day...

Snow covered roads led to many accidents on Sunday around Minnesota as 2-3 inches of snow fell in parts of central Minnesota with more south of St. Cloud toward the...

National News: after early reports that Democrats and the White House struck a deal to avert a partial government shutdown and temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security as they...

Announcing her presence "on the ground" in Minneapolis Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said at least 16 people were arrested for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement officers in the...