Minnesota Senate president aide moonlights for nonprofit with state government contracts

Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion’s executive assistant moonlights for a nonprofit foundation that has been paid about $3 million by a handful of state agencies in the past three years.

The DFL senator from north Minneapolis hired Shemeka Bogan in 2020 to be a legislative assistant, often the first line of contact for constituents trying to reach a lawmaker.

Given the Legislature’s oversight role of the executive branch, Bogan’s dual role raises questions about conflicts of interest.

In addition to her nearly $83,000 legislative salary, state records show Bogan is earning $2,000 a month as a subcontractor for the Stairstep Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 1992 to work with churches on social issues. 

State government payments accounted for half of the nonprofit’s funding in 2021, according to the most recently available IRS documents. So far this year, the foundation has been paid over a half million dollars by the health department, MnDOT and the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency.

Bogan has worked on the nonprofit’s largest contract listed in a state database: $400,000 from MnDOT to do outreach to communities of color about a proposal to improve Highway 252 and Interstate 94 in Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center and north Minneapolis. 

The department has been working to make Highway 252 safer for about a decade and wants to do a better job of engaging African American communities, whose voices have historically been ignored concerning highway construction. 

Stairstep’s “pastoral leadership team” worked to “engage the route.” State documents show about a half-dozen pastors received $200 monthly payments for their work. Bogan said she largely works with eight pastors in the area to make sure they’re informed about the project and communicating it in a culturally relevant way.

Spokespersons for the housing and health departments said they do not believe Bogan worked on their contracts.

Secretary of the Senate Tom Bottern said the Senate policy governing outside work is “pretty limited in scope.” It bars employees from getting paid by another public entity during their state job’s normal working hours, meaning you can’t work for both places during the same work hours. But nothing in the policy prohibits aides from working as subcontractors for a recipient of state money, as in the case with Bogan. 

Bogan said she checked with Senate counsel and was “cleared for any conflicts.”

“My contract is with Stairstep, not MnDOT,” she said.

Stairstep CEO Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson said Bogan’s work for Champion has no connection to the MnDOT contract.

“This project didn’t come to us through the Legislature … it came through MnDOT,” he said. “Somebody’s trying to make a mountain out of something that is not even a molehill.”

Champion did not respond to requests for comment. 

Michael McDonald, professor emeritus of applied ethics at the University of British Columbia, said Bogan’s dual roles create a question of whose agenda she’s advancing and whether Stairstep has a leg up on other groups due to Bogan’s connections.

“When we occupy dual roles it can raise questions about conflict of interest, independence, and fairness — and fairness to other groups that might bid on the contract,” McDonald said.

Bogan disagreed, saying, “I definitely do not mix the two. I’m not representing Senator Champion when I’m there. There’s no intersection at all.”

The Legislature increasingly relies on nonprofits to carry out government policies, including everything from preventing violence to encouraging people to get vaccinated. MPR News recently estimated the Legislature approved nearly $1 billion for nonprofits in the next two-year budget. 

Stairstep has been working with the state since 2002, long before Bogan began working for the foundation in 2021. 

The Stairstep Foundation has landed an increasing number of state contracts since 2013, when, Babington-Johnson publicly chastised state officials for not awarding grants to groups that serve Black people to raise awareness of the state health insurance marketplace, MNsure.

The following year, the foundation got nearly $142,000 from the state Department of Human Services, according to a state database of payments. 

​​Babington-Johnson, who called Champion his “dear brother” in a Facebook post and has publicly lauded the senator, has eschewed too much bureaucratic oversight in the past.

The Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) froze payments in 2017 to a group called EMERGE and its partners, including the Stairstep Foundation, for not meeting goals and having problems with financial management and reporting progress.

In 2019, Babington-Johnson said groups like his that got “equity grants” to provide job training and education to fight racial disparities “got sidetracked, hoodwinked, hornswoggled” by bureaucracy, according to a MinnPost story. The groups complained about slow state payments and burdensome oversight.

During an April committee hearing, Champion questioned the focus on oversight of nonprofit groups versus for-profit groups.

“I’m all for oversight, I have no problem with that, but if we start identifying only a certain type of organization, that becomes a problem. Something should be done to reflect that we’re being fiscally responsible … and not just throwing potshots at certain organizations.”

This session, EMERGE supported a workforce bill, co-authored by Champion, containing $25 million per year for small, community-based nonprofits, saying it would enable them to train 400 new people. The nonprofits can get up to $750,000 grants for job training.

Babington-Johnson testified in support of the bill, saying his African American church network could be a “relevant instrument” with a “moral voice” and “little bit more credibility in the streets.”

Champion’s bill included a $1.2 million grant to the Stairstep Foundation for “African American church festivals and events” and a $270,000 grant each year for “community-based workforce development efforts.”