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The new year begins with some new faces in state government – and some faces in new positions.
One encouraging relocation is Mitch Roob’s transfer from the Family and Social Services Administration to the Department of Commerce, where a preoccupation with bottom-line figures and tracking telephone wait times won’t result in disruption of vital services for the most vulnerable of Hoosiers.
Roob’s expertise in the business side of health care management delivered some operational improvements for the massive state agency, and he demonstrated his legislative strength in winning approval of the Healthy Indiana Plan, which has provided insurance coverage to almost 42,000 low-income Hoosiers.
But any good works Roob did at FSSA are compromised by the headaches and heartaches he created in the so-called “modernization” of the welfare eligibility process. Certainly, it wasn’t perfect, but the decision to sign a 10-year, $1.16 billion contract to outsource the process under which Indiana residents apply for food stamps, Medicaid and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program had immediate and disturbing effects. Hoosiers with disabilities and older residents lost their benefits over mishandled paperwork or miscommunications.
In spite of a deepening recession, Medicaid enrollment in the counties where the privatization initiative was rolled out fell by more than 4 percent between January and May, while the counties where the service had not yet been automated increased enrollment by almost 3 percent. The pilot area included Muncie and Anderson – both hard-hit by job losses.
If the goal was to reduce the number of residents receiving benefits, as Roob’s harshest critics suggest, it was effective, but it is a poor long-term strategy for Indiana’s economic well-being.
Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner for economic sciences, makes that point in a recent New York Times column. He argues that governors across the nation are repeating the mistake of 1932, when Herbert Hoover cut federal spending to balance the budget. They are cutting, “often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.”
Krugman acknowledges that the governors have few options because of balanced-budget requirements.
“But let’s step back for a moment and contemplate just how crazy it is, from a national point of view, to be cutting public services and public investment right now,” writes the Princeton economist. “Think about it: Is America – not state governments, but the nation as a whole – less able to afford help to troubled teens, medical care for families or repairs to decaying roads and bridges than it was one or two years ago?”
Krugman suggests the approach taken by Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland – calling for federal aid to the states for foods stamps and Medicaid, for state and local infrastructure and for education – is the right one. The alternative, “shredding the social safety net at a moment when many more Americans need help isn’t just cruel. It adds to the sense of insecurity that is one important factor driving the economy down,” he writes.
Gov. Mitch Daniels and his new FSSA chief, Anne Waltermann Murphy, should join Strickland in calling for additional federal support for vital services, including food stamps and Medicaid. They have always been a shared responsibility of state and federal government, so it makes sense to increase the federal share when states have no other option but to cut services.
