Casey Stengel, the manager of the spectacularly inept 1962 New York Mets, supposedly asked in despair one day: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” It’s a question increasingly being asked of Raimondo administration officials.
The UHIP computer system has yet to work as advertised. The Department of Transportation lost $50 million by failing to put up toll gantries on schedule. The state Veterans Home has been haunted by massive cost overruns and concerns that wheelchairs cannot fit through its emergency exits. Problems persist with the state’s transportation to medical appointments for poor and elderly patients. The Department of Children, Youth and Families displayed horrifying negligence that led to the death of a child.
Then there’s the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals. Last week, the administration finally confessed to a $20-million operating gap in the agency because it had fallen out of compliance with federal rules (“Legislators call for answers after learning of agency’s $20M budget hole,” news, March 6, by Katherine Gregg).
What is galling is that the administration kept the problem secret from the public and the legislature until well into the budget year, while the next state budget is being created.
After a series of Journal inquiries to BHDDH over a period of eight days, the director of the state Office of Management and Budget, Jonathan Womer, finally sent the chairmen of the House and Senate Finance committees a letter spelling out the problem.
The administration, Ms. Gregg reported, had not billed Medicare and Medicaid for reimbursements for patients at the state-run hospital for more than six months because of a federal prohibition against having more than 50% of the state’s general hospital population in psychiatric beds.
House Finance Committee Chairman Marvin Abney, D-Newport, expressed his frustration over the administration’s failure to communicate.
“In addition to the sheer magnitude of the money at stake here, I am troubled by the lack of disclosure,” Mr. Abney said. “The problem appears to date back to last summer, and the administration has had numerous formal and informal opportunities to alert us to the potential problem.”
The governor’s revised budget plan sent to the legislature in January “doesn’t even hint at the problem, let alone provide for a contingency funding plan,” he said.
It’s hard to know why the administration kept this secret. Perhaps a $20-million budget hole might have made it harder for the governor to propose new spending programs. Perhaps she feared the legislature would criticize her. But delaying the inevitable did the public no good.
The legislature is already scrambling to close a $200-million structural deficit for 2020-2021. Some of the governor’s revenue proposals — such as hurriedly setting up state-run marijuana shops — were deemed dead on arrival. And on top of that the legislature must now find an additional $20 million.
Gov. Gina Raimondo should pay closer attention to the nuts and bolts of governing in Rhode Island. And there ought to be better communication between the executive and legislature branches.