Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Pence Keeps The Doors Revolving At FSSA


Surprise! He's back. I can't say that I'm surprised since I never thought Gov. Mike Pence cared much about ethics, but it's rather galling for him to name former FSSA Secretary Michael Gargano in a new deputy secretary role where he will be in charge of operations and the Healthy Indiana Plan. Just last month I wrote about Gargano going to work for an FSSA contractor awarded contracts during his previous tenure in top FSSA roles shortly after he departed the agency in January, 2013, apparently unaffected by the state's revolving door law. Prior to his last stint at FSSA, Gargano owned a consulting firm that not only provided consulting work for the agency but also provided consulting work for ACS, the controversial company awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to manage welfare services for the agency. Pence named Carmel psychiatrist John Wernert as Secretary, replacing Gargano's successor, Debra Minott, who Pence fired last week after a little more than a year on the job. Pence isn't fooling anyone with Wernert's appointment. Everyone knows that Gargano will be the de facto head of the agency. Barnes & Thornburg's Bob Grand, ACS's attorney, wouldn't have it any other way, and we know that Gov. Pence does whatever he's ordered to do by Grand. Government in Indiana sure works to enrich Gargano and his wife, Ann Lathrop, who works for another state contractor, Crowe Horwath, and also once worked at ACS.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is beyond insane! Up till now whenever the governors changed they cleaned out the previous admins holdovers! Pence is clearly worthless and a RINO!

Anonymous said...

Certainly this will all be exposed if Pence chooses to run for another office...DC doesn't like insiders making money off of social programs and children and families that need services...To think the masterminds aren't being carefully monitored is fool hearty...

Anonymous said...

As a former rino, i am upset at this slur of all of us intelligent and thoughtful former republicans. Pence may be a lot of things, but rino is assuredly not one of them

Anonymous said...

Pence is weak...and bought...

Anonymous said...

As a true republican I say that Pence has betrayed the republican party and is a complete waste of space! Gary Welsh for Governor!

Anonymous said...

The Healthy Indiana plan is a sham crafted solely to spite Obama, interfere with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, and prevent hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers from obtaining Medicaid coverage, which is clearly the better insurance compared to the miserable Healthy Indiana plan. Pence is a spiteful, Republican tool that would rather people suffer without medical care than pay for Indiana's share of Medicaid. He'll be remembered for this rather than what he used to stand for, which was fiscal conservatism. He claims to be a Christian, but his utter lack of compassionate concern for those attempting to obtain real insurance through Medicaid is stingy, greedy and horrible. I urge him to abandon his Obamacare fight and really try to get these people covered. Healthy Indiana is just worthless and Pence knows it.