| One of the things that has amazed me about the FSSA privatization process -- and I believe it applies to the entire Mitch Daniels privatization fetish -- is how much the people that Gov. Daniels has put in charge of state agencies really seem to hate their employees. They call their own employees inefficient, they call them fraudulent, and more than anything they refuse to admit that anyone who works for them has the potential to compete with someone from the private sector. It's really rather remarkable when you think about it.
Take the most recent example of the standoff currently underway between Gov. Daniels and Congress over their attempt to ban the outsourcing of social services, such as the Indiana FSSA privatization. Here is what Mitch Roob had to say: On the food stamp issue, Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee have raised privacy concerns about contractors handling private information of food stamp applicants.
The committee's farm and nutrition bill would mandate that only state employees deal with food stamp applicants and determine their eligibility. It would also prevent states from using federal funds to cancel the private contracts they'd no longer be able to have.
Indiana contracted with a group of companies led by IBM to determine the eligibility of Hoosiers for food stamps, cash assistance, child-care vouchers and Medicaid. About 1,400 state employees moved from the public payroll to IBM's in March.
Daniels and Mitch Roob, secretary of Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration, say the proposed ban on private contracting of food stamp screening would be costly and result in worse services and increased fraud. Now with all due respect to the business savvy leaders who run our state government, but what planet do they come from where the private sector is completely innocent of fraudulent services? The way that Mitch Roob talks about the people in his agency, you would think they are all crooks, while the all-powerful private sector provides efficient wonder-workers with perfection.
Better yet, take the example of a recent complaint by federal officials that the newly-privatized welfare system championed by Mitch Roob was breaking guidelines by not consistently including state employees in the process. Now, under normal circumstances, a complaint from the feds is probably a bad day for an agency head of a state government. Not in the Mitch Daniels / Mitch Roob universe though, because their agency's failure just proves their point that government employees can't be trusted: The head of the Family and Social Services Administration says criticism from a federal agency shows the need for privatizing the state welfare system.
Federal officials say Indiana's rollout of its privatized welfare program has broken federal food stamp rules by bypassing state employees in some cases. Indiana risks losing millions of dollars in federal funds if it does not fix the problem.
FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob says the problem shows that state workers aren't following standard operating procedures.
He says that supports his contention that Indiana's welfare system is outdated and that the privatization is needed to make the delivery of benefits more efficient. Hey, here's an idea: How about more accountability of the leaders in our state's government. It has always been popular to let grumblings about "government workers" be used as an explanation for inefficiencies in the state bureaucracy, but perhaps it is time we stop allowing the agency heads in Mitch Daniels' government to pawn off their problems on their own employees, and require a little more leadership from these supposed efficiency experts. |
