REMAKING DHHS

When Maine’s Department of Human Services was overhauled last year, legislators should have known the reform wasn’t the end of the department’s troubles, but a possible turning point in them. The reaction, however, to yet another report on DHS accounting from three or four years ago suggests at least some lawmakers may have expected the magic wand of reform, where one wave of a bill over a problem makes it disappear.

At issue this week was the latest report from the federal inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that concludes the state, between 2000 and 2003, claimed adoption assistance money for 403 children who did not meet the federal criteria. Of the $21.8 million in federal funding during that time, about $4.2 million was “over claimed” because of income ineligibility, a questionable need to remove the children from their homes or the age of the children. The inspector general says Maine should cut its next federal report by $2.5 million as a result and work with the federal government to resolve the remaining $1.7 million.

Two things are worth noticing: The errors date back over several years, back to pre-reform days when these sorts of problems were what made lawmakers demand major changes in the department. Second, the department says it is addressing these problems and there is reason to believe it is making progress in its work overall. A major agriculture inspection of Maine’s food stamp program, for instance, reportedly found several improvements in performance and communication, and the error rate in the program, once serious at 13 percent, has fallen to 4 percent.

Nevertheless, the chairwoman of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, Hannah Pingree, said in a news story Tuesday about the adoption assistance, “If we had known about this, I think we would have tried harder to hold their feet to the fire and be accountable.” A member of the committee, Sen. Richard Rosen, expressed similar sentiments.

After a string of accounting failures and the department’s recent Medicaid-reimbursement disaster these conclusions are understandable. But it isn’t enough to blame the agency at every turn. The latest report is not a new scandal but old news that was not hidden from lawmakers. DHHS Commissioner Jack Nicholas says the legislative committee had been briefed on the issue, but even if it hadn’t the problem was known among those following the department.

The department is making real, if slow, progress, in part because lawmakers have insisted on it. In fairness to the department and to the people it serves, officials and the public should make distinctions between disasters and further evidence that they were right to demand an overhaul when they did.