How can state stop abuses found in DHHS audit
Published May 17, 2015
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, May 15, 2015.
It's the gift that keeps on giving. Just as memory of the last round of problems with the state's Medicaid-payment system begins to fade, we find a new batch on the state's doorstep.
The state's NCTracks computer system was troubled from the start. At its worst, it just didn't work, leaving doctors and hospitals across the state high and dry, waiting months and even years for health-services reimbursements.
That manager, Angie Sligh, retired earlier this year. Before 2013, she was in charge of the office that managed Medicaid information systems and administered the troubled NCTracks. The audit found 15 employees with personal connections to Sligh. Six came from her church. One was her hairdresser's daughter. Others included her own daughter, her former husband and her ex-husband's wife. The audit correctly labels that "nepotism."
Six of the 15 weren't even qualified for the jobs they held, the audit said. One executive assistant was paid more than anyone with a comparable position in state government, earning more than $86,000 in 2014, which is $8,000 more than Gov. Pat McCrory's personal secretary made.
Auditors say Sligh was also improperly allowed to accumulate more than 2,000 hours of comp time and was compensated for it when she retired.
Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Vos disputed the audit's findings and said the questionable spending was more like $150,000, not $1.6 million. "It appears that the vast majority of temporary workers referenced in your draft report were temporary workers who were initially retained a number of years ago, and most of them no longer work" at HHS, she said. In other words, not my fault, blame the previous administration (you know, the Democrats).
We'll take that with a grain of salt. Maybe two. But what's important is what's ahead. The taxpayers need to know what measures are being taken to prevent this sort of abuse from happening again. We hope legislators are asking, and doing something to make sure there's a good answer.
May 17, 2015 at 10:46 am
Richard L Bunce says:
The continuing incompetence of government bureaucracies in effectively performing any given task is a systemic issue with government bureaucracies. The revenue to support them is not earned based on their performance but acquired independent of the service they provide and confiscated from the payer by the use of government coercion. It is the usual practice within the government that when bureaucracies fail, as they often do, they are rewarded with increased budgets to fix the problems of their own making. A State government with very limited powers would not provide as many opportunities for incompetence to waste the resources of the residents of the State.
