Reprinted from

DFL Candidate for State Auditor finds more discrepancies
Sep 21, 2006 -- 5:21 PM CDT
Sara Reller

Rebecca Otto, DFL candidate for State Auditor, found more problems with state financial records, this time in school funding. She reported an $87 million gap between the Minnesota Department of Education's data and current State Auditor Pat Anderson's data, as well as a missing 1,675 students.

Otto said, “The State Auditor’s report says it is based on an analysis of Department of Education data. It appears as though her numbers do not match the Department of Education data. If the Department of Education has made an $87.5 million error, then the State Auditor should tell them, so they can change it, like they did when I informed them of a $12 million error in an education revenue report. If the report varies for some other reason, then it needs to explain why.”

Otto also found some charter schools that were not counted and others that were counted twice, as well as inflation being used for the wrong period of time.

One of governor Tim Pawlenty's claims is that under his administration school funding has risen. Otto's report shows that this is only true with one set of inflation assumptions and that with the assumptions used for Truth in Taxation the funding for schools has actaully fallen behind inflation by 15%.

Otto's report can be found here

Otto has been looking through many of the reports done by current State Auditor Pat Anderson and found significant errors in nearly all of them.