Big Sky Times

Wendie Fredrickson, a Green Party candidate in Montana's 2020 U.S. Senate race, continues to speak out against Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, alleging corruption, KBUL reported.

Fredrickson, a former state audit reviewer, has told news media that Bullock created a hostile work environment by intimidating anyone who uncovered his alleged misdeeds.

"The people of Montana deserve better than Steve Bullock,” Fredrickson said to the Helena Independent Record, KBUL reported. “During his tenure in office, he has deliberately inhibited investigations and stifled the concerns of Montana’s auditors. He created a hostile work environment of a place I had enjoyed working two decades and actively intimidated or fired employees who raised concerns about fraud and the mismanagement of federal and state taxpayer dollars."

Fredrickson said it saddened and concerned her when Bullock decided to run for U.S. Senate (after a failed presidential bid), stating that the state's residents couldn't risk electing him.

KBUL reported that although Democrats usually like having Libertarians on the ballot with the hopes that they will take votes away from Republicans, Montana Democrats do not want Green Party candidates on the ballot because they don't want votes taken away from their party's candidates.

At least 10 former state auditors and staffers alleged in 2016 that state officials had discouraged employees from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) from investigating payments from as far back as 2005, according to the Independent Record.

Bullock, via a spokesperson, told the news agency that he had been told of the DHHS employees' concerns and that those questions were then forwarded to the legislative auditor Angus Maciver, who failed to find any evidence of fraud.

Maciver told the news agency that he didn't find any reports. He did say that the Attorney General's Office sometimes asks legislative auditors to help on its investigations, but that he couldn't comment more due to "confidential criminal justice information," the Record reported.

The employees alleged that two of them were told to advance questionable welfare payments on Bullock's orders, which he denied.

Fredrickson left her job with the state in December 2014, alleging she was bullied by state officials after she raised concerns about payments that she believed to be potentially fraudulent.

The news agency reports that she alleged she was told to continue the payments and stop asking questions, which she refused to do. She was then forced into retirement but not before she was stripped from her responsibilities as an audit reviewer and isolated from her co-workers.

“It used to be a great place to work,” Fredrickson told the Record. “It wasn’t until this administration that there was so much pressure you couldn’t do it.”

Auditors alleged they were either discouraged or prevented from actually doing complete investigations on certain transactions. They said they were bullied if they did not adopt a "gotcha attitude" toward contractors, the news agency reported.

That same year two Republican state senators sought a special legislative committee so that they could investigate the alleged retaliation, The Washington Free Beacon reported.

Another DHHS employee, Carol Bondy, also filed a lawsuit that had similar allegations to the state employees', the Free Beacon reported.

Bondy was an audit bureau chief with DHHS and was dismissed after she voiced concern over state payments, the news agency said.