A new report in Minnesota highlights how a former bureaucrat involved in granting a church millions of dollars later went to work as a consultant for the church.

The audit also says that the church failed to provide necessary reporting for hundreds of thousands of dollars of state funding.

Both the church and the former bureaucrat deny any wrongdoing, and gave their side of the story to The Daily Signal.

According to the report, issued by the Office of the Legislative Auditor last week, a grantee—later identified as Zion Baptist Church in North Minneapolis—”could not provide us detailed invoices or program participant data to support a payment of $672,647.78″ from the Department of Human Services’ Bureau of Health Administration “for a single month of work.”

Zion Baptist Church contracted with 14 subcontractors, two of which the legislative auditor visited. The church reportedly paid $40,000 to each of the subcontractors, without specifying rates per service unit.

Those subcontractors failed to show who they served with the money they received. One of them said “the grantee told them they did not need to keep detailed participant records.”

Finally, the grant manager “who approved the $672,647.78 payment left DHS a few days after approving it and later started to provide consulting services to the grantee,” the report stated.

The administration accepted all but one of the legislative auditor’s recommendations for reform, acknowledging multiple administrative failures.

“Immediately upon learning of issues related to the grantee in question, the Minnesota Department of Human Services‘ Office of Internal Controls and Accountability began a thorough audit of........

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