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Martiga Lohn
St. Paul, Minn.

Audit calls for better oversight of grants to nonprofits

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(AP) - Minnesota government needs to keep a sharper eye on the money it gives to nonprofit organizations, and lawmakers should get out of the business of hand-picking which groups get grants, Legislative Auditor James Nobles said Friday.

An audit from his office found uneven oversight of about $1 billion in public grant money awarded to nonprofits. Supervision is "especially weak" when the Legislature writes a grant recipient into law or makes the criteria so narrow that it picks a winner, the report said.

The report reviewed 50 grants to nonprofits, including 10 designated by the Legislature. That's just a small fraction of the 1,900 organizations that got state grants in 2005.

Nobles has criticized state oversight of nonprofit grants before. This report followed a 2002 audit that also criticized state departments for how they parceled out the money.

The latest audit calls for the creation of a state grants management office to tighten supervision of the money.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)