Proposed bill takes aim at state employees who misuse money

A DFL legislator will introduce legislation in January aimed at making it easier to prosecute state employees who misuse public money.

The bill comes in the wake of two high-profile cases in which prosecutors declined to press charges against former employees of the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for what most acknowledge were cases of misappropriating state dollars.

"Scamming the state of Minnesota is always bad, but it’s even worse in an economic downturn like this one," Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, said at a St. Paul press conference hosted by the legislation’s author, Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley.

One of the two cases involved former MnDOT emergency management director Sonia Pitt, who was accused of using $26,000 in state money to take personal trips to Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., and using a state cell phone to make frequent and lengthy phone calls to a male friend in the Federal Highway Administration.

The other involved former DNR husband-and-wife employees Mike and Cathy Hamm, who inappropriately spent $300,000 in state money to organize an international game warden conference.

Current state law does not provide for criminal penalties for state employees who misuse state money. Under Winkler’s proposed legislation, it would be a gross misdemeanor