The Legislature established few specific requirements for how the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) should award Shade Tree Bonding Grants, resulting in the department using significant discretion to select grantees. Further, when making grant decisions, DNR’s grant review committees considered unscored criteria that DNR had not communicated to applicants, which led to some applicants not receiving grant funding in favor of applicants with lower overall scores.
The Office of the Legislative Auditor has over 50 years of
strengthening accountability and providing legislative
oversight of Minnesota state government.
A brief overview of OLA’s history.
