Down for the Count

If the senior management at the Department of Human Services didn’t hear things clearly enough from Gov. Baldacci before, a recent news story spoke loudly. It is clear the governor has lost confidence in DHS officials and will no longer defend the agency. Given the many problems there, this is not surprising, but it demands that the governor speed up the process of replacing officials with people he trusts.

The latest problem for DHS was printed by the Maine Sunday Telegram this week, in which a story asserted the agency could not identify how many children it had in its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program for a particular month. DHS officials said a since-repaired computer problem caused what appeared to be a huge jump in the number of children receiving welfare for last August to 32,538. But, it turns out, the actual number hadn’t changed much between February 2002 and August 2003. This week they noted it rose from 19,129 to 20,935 during that time. The latest figure, for November, is 20,393.

Rather than defend the agency, point out that computer problems aren’t unusual or argue that DHS had taken appropriate steps to fix the problem, the governor’s spokesman, Lee Umphrey, said of the confusion, “I think it’s worrisome. Part of the reason the governor has become so intimately involved in DHS is, too often, there are these discrepancies.”

That, in political-speak, is as clear a signal as DHS leaders will get that the governor has had enough. After a series of complaints about child care services and a disastrous string of financial problems, the story delivers a terrible message about DHS. And the fact that the agency had a glitch in its computer, while understandable, doesn’t explain how the inaccurate number was filed with the federal government initially.

Under normal conditions, DHS would have a difficult time operating without the governor’s confidence. As it undergoes a merger with the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services and is restructured, carrying on vital services while knowing the governor’s office has serious doubts about its ability is nearly impossible. Despite the problems at DHS, Gov. Baldacci has hesitated to make changes at the top of the agency, but for everyone’s sake, he needs to move this process along now. Similarly, the governor’s committee on the restructuring, led by former labor commissioner Valerie Landry, should recommend broad and substantial changes when it submits its final report next month.

DHS provides services that are too important to allow the agency to drift for months more while its restructuring takes place. Given its string of troubles, it has drifted for too long already.