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A new audit has uncovered errors in Minnesota’s payment program intended for folks working public-facing jobs in the early days of Covid-19.

Released Tuesday by the Office of the Legislative Auditor, the report estimates that only about 60% of the program’s more than 1 million recipients were technically eligible for the pay. Nine percent of recipients were ineligible, while the remainder’s eligibility is unclear, according to the audit.

The Legislature established the “frontline worker pay program” in 2022 for people working jobs that required in-person attendance. That includes positions like nurses, janitors, and prison guards – jobs that do not have a telework option. Lawmakers set aside $500 million for the program.

To be eligible, workers must have worked one or more “frontline” jobs for at least 120 hours in Minnesota between March 15, 2020 and June 30, 2021.

The auditor specifically called out the state’s Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) and the Department of Revenue. The former department, the auditor said, “did not comply with requirements for the program.”

“The more significant instances of noncompliance related to payments to ineligible individuals,” the audit read.

The revenue department, meanwhile, “did not verify adjusted gross income for all applicants,” according to the audit.

The auditor also found 290 individuals who died before they received a payment. “Based on our initial data analysis, one individual was deceased for more than two years prior to the application submission date,” the audit said.

Lawmakers weren’t spared; the auditor’s office also blamed the Legislature for moving too quickly to implement the program. The audit noted that the program relied too heavily on self-identification from applicants: “The Legislature should consider the amount of risk the state is willing to accept when establishing programs quickly and with eligibility conditions that rely on self-attestation,” the audit said.

The audit recommends that the Department of Revenue recoup payments to ineligible individuals.

The auditor’s report made its eligibility estimations based on analysis of just a few hundred applicants. In its response to the audit, DLI took issue with that methodology: “DLI disagrees that the employer survey methodology utilized by [Office of the Legislative Auditor] is in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.”

Paul Marquart, commissioner of the revenue department, noted that his team “chose not to penalize applicants by denying all applications where we could not verify [adjusted gross income]. We also chose this route to minimize delays in recognizing these workers,” he said. “We can conclude that Revenue’s impact in any ineligible applicant receiving a payment is minimal given that we accurately verified AGI for 97.3 percent of all payment recipients.”