Would Mary Mayhew make a good governor?
Hell, no.
Republican Mayhew, who recently resigned after six years as commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services so she could announce her gubernatorial ambitions, has an interesting resume. She’s been an active Democrat, directing a 1990 congressional campaign, working for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and serving as a congressional aide. She’s also lobbied for the Maine Hospital Association, which strongly supports Medicaid expansion, the exact opposite of Mayhew’s current platform. Now, she’s positioning herself as heir apparent to GOP Gov. Paul LePage.
That’s not what makes her a crappy choice for governor. Mayhew’s unfitness has less to do with issues (although her stands sometimes seem to be driven by political expediency rather than conviction) and more to do with her stunning talent for incompetent management.
To be fair, DHHS was a disaster long before she arrived. Previous administrations created an enormous bureaucracy that burned taxpayer dollars without doing much to help people in need. So give Mayhew a pass on her first three years in charge.
But by 2015, an adept commissioner should have cleaned out the deadwood and realigned priorities. Mayhew claimed she did, introducing the first DHHS budget in years without a massive shortfall. She credited that to reduced Medicaid spending, but that wasn’t the whole story. She also axed 11 percent of the workforce at the Center for Disease Control, cut $20 million from anti-smoking programs, slashed Drugs for the Elderly, General Assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and food stamps.
Some of those cuts made no sense. For instance, half the disease-control positions were federally funded, so the reductions didn’t save the state anything.
Later that year, DHHS missed a deadline to appeal the loss of Medicaid payments for patients at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, decertified by the feds in 2013 for numerous serious violations. Mayhew brushed that off as “technicalities.”
Washington then cited DHHS for failing to recover $4.4 million in Medicaid overpayments to nursing homes. Meanwhile, Mayhew told a legislative committee investigating the lack of progress in bringing Riverview into compliance that the fault was the Legislature’s for failing to appropriate enough money.
To begin 2016, the feds threatened DHHS with $29 million in penalties for substandard welfare programs. Mayhew blamed – who else – the Legislature for not anteing up more cash. The Lewiston Sun Journal revealed that Mayhew’s minions had failed to implement required new standards for lead poisoning. The Portland Press Herald discovered the department hadn’t done squat to start up drug-treatment programs approved a year before. The Bangor Daily reported that DHHS had cut public-health nursing positions by 50 percent and abruptly ended a federally funded program to provide services to teens with mental illness, leaving $3 million on the table. Also from the BDN: The department had transferred $7.8 million in federal grants to ineligible programs. Mayhew denied that, but eventually reversed the money shifts, although not before improper spending reached $13.4 million.
Mayhew was quoted by the Bangor paper as saying the problems at Riverview were “less than sensational,” but in August, she and LePage announced plans to build a $5-million facility next door to house patients found incompetent to stand trial. But they wouldn’t say where the money was coming from.
The Press Herald found Maine’s child-poverty rate was increasing, but DHHS was refusing to spend $155 million in TANF funds. Mayhew was unconcerned. “There were higher poverty rates for children when all this money was simply going out in the form of a cash benefit to used in strip clubs, to be used in gambling facilities, to be used to bail someone out of jail,” she said.
The Maine Sunday Telegram discovered the wait list for adults with intellectual disabilities had grown from 111 in 2008 to 1,200. Mayhew called that comparison “uniformed, misleading and beyond biased.”
Now it’s 2017. Mayhew has already forfeited $1.4 million in federal money by insisting on photo IDs on eligibility cards for nutrition programs. And just this month, the feds announced the state would have to return $51 million in improper Medicaid payments to operate Riverview, money DHHS was repeatedly warned not to spend.
There’s more. But it won’t fit.
You don’t have to be certifiable to email aldiamon@herniahill.net. But it helps.
So now I’m wondering why she actually resigned from the position. Running for the job as Governor could be her great cover story to get her out of the office she was in. When she was knowingly and willfully spending federal money the wrong way, and making the state responsible for fines … money that had to be paid back plus more in restitution… that was willful misuse of our money. The only job she should be considering should include if the orange jumpsuit fits her well enough and can she pick up 50 pounds of dirty laundry at the state jail.
The fact that you dont like her makes me want to vote for her !!!
If Hillary Clinton didn’t get an orange jump suit,, why should this one?
What is this,,, “Girls Gone Wild” or what!!
Al,
Let me clarify your long rambling anti- republican letter. She was the first commissioner, after 40+ years of
Democrat appointed commissioners, to get the massive DHHS agency in the black by cutting the bloated
Spending? This is the largest government agency in the state and has thousands of employees and she cut
Some of those positions too? She got some people off welfare? She may be conservative like our current
Governor and she may cut more wasteful spending if she becomes our next governor? I don’t see any problems
Here. Thanks for the writing a great campaign letter for Mary, you convinced me. I’m voting for her along with
Jesse
I read your first paragraph Al….. Then realized it was as the old saying goes… It take some people longer than others to smarten up and see the light… She has come a long ways man… Give her some credit…
I don’t know much about the woman but Al and the BDN hate her so she must be a great choice for working Mainers.
I agree with Jesse and Mike. After reading this MS Mayhew will definitely be getting my vote.
A summary:
Once a Democrat, now a Republican (She can make choices!)
Reduced Medicaid spending (Less chance for healthy low income citizens, additional hospital debt due to unpaid bills)
Failed to implement lead standards (Less healthy population)
Cut anti smoking campaign funding (Less healthy population)
Cut CDC Staff (Less healthy population)
Failed to implement needed changes at Riverview (Less healthy population, large financial penalties)
Successfully held back Taniff funds (Hungrier low income families, and children of)
Wow, wonderful success story of holding back money, helping to increase hospital debt, tobacco dependency, teen suicide, opiate abuse, and hungry children, risk of illness with CDC cutbacks! Very impressive!
Earn my vote for anything? No
“summarizing”
You should remember one thing when reading any article from a hard left writer. It will be written with
an extremely negative slant and only mention the negatives. The DHHS has been a bloated, wasteful
agency for 40+ years. The dems ran up huge debts to the hospitals for years and DHHS was in the
red every year and the state legislature often gave them emergency funding to pay their debts. Mary M.
slowly turned that mammoth ship around. That alone is an amazing feat!!!! Can you name any other
massive government agency that has been turned around???? Of course, she had many problems during
her tenure. They were caused by the dems in Augusta that have been fighting against common sense
reforms since Governor Lepage and Mary Mayhew took office. One good example. They made it
illegal to use EBT cards for alcohol and cigarettes and lottery tickets and tattoos and tanning sessions and
bail bonds and cash withdrawals at ATM machines in casinos. The dems allowed that forever and voted
against these reforms for the first 5 years of the Lepage/Mayhew leadership. They finally came around
a few months before the last election (for fear of losing their seats in congress). We need more leaders like this!!!! How odd that Al didn’t mention this, or any other positive thing she did??
How is hospital debt now? Can we sell the Alcohol business again? Celebrate the positives is fine, but own the negatives, too! Riverview? The rest of the above? Ok to save money, but at what cost for the health of Maine citizens?
Place your bets…,Mayhew will never be governor of Maine.
Mike:
Read the litany of Mayhew’s wrongheaded financial decisions cited by Al above.
Now subject her to the same fiscal scrutiny that you would anyone with an EBT card.
Her job was to “Provide integrated health and human services to the people of Maine to assist individuals in meeting their needs, while respecting the rights and preferences of the individual and family, within available resources”
It seems to me she focused solely on those last three words. Even then, the glaring financial blunders cited above disqualifies her for governor.
I wonder if the someone from the far right would be allowed to post on this forum as well. I’ve never really paid attention to Al’s writing, but I say I’m turned off.
@ Jenny its hard enough getting comments from the right posted let alone an op-ed.
@ Jesse: Amen.
If you think the Bulldog is tough.. try the WTVL Sent, KJ or PPH…. They ban ya and refuse to respond to any questions as to why…
Remember what happened to the college Republicans at UMF.
TOLERANCE….NOT!!
All their bad behavior and they stat on their soap box.
Rejected.
It seems to me that we need welfare reform, but reform that makes sense. Limiting what can be purchased with an EBT card and where it can be used does not prevent the TANF recepients from using those funds on those items anyway. One simply has to withdraw cash at the grocery store ATM and then buy anything they want or spend the cash anywhere they want. While limiting access seems useful, it does not restrict the activity.
It is time for Maine to decide how to best help people become financially independent. Having a work requirement that cannot be waived is a start. Requiring people to apply for jobs before applying for benefits as well as while they are receiving benefits makes sense. Treat it like unemployment. When a person actually gets a job don’t take away three dollars in benefits for every dollar earned. This practice simply encourages recipients of public assistance to not work. We should have a process to phase out benefits as a person replaces benefits with money that is earned.
DHHS has a tough job helping people, especially when some of those people do not want to help themselves. I am not trying to preach, just state my opinion. As a former recipient of public benefits, TANF, SNAP, and MaineCare, I know a little bit about needing help to support your family. Public assistance should be a hand up, not a hand out.