AUGUSTA, Maine — The LePage administration says some progress is being made in filling more than 1,000 vacant state positions throughout the executive branch, but Democratic leaders say LePage, who has vowed to personally review the hiring of every position, is not only slowing down the hiring process but may be discouraging qualified applicants from applying.
Initially, LePage’s plan to approve all new state hires was touted as a way of making government more efficient, as the review would also determine whether each position was actually needed. But Rep. Peggy Rotundo, a Lewiston Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, says the governor’s justification masks a hidden agenda.
“There’s a lot of micromanaging going on,” Rotundo says.
Rotundo and other Democrats wonder whether LePage’s scrutiny of the state job vacancies is slowing down efforts to recruit new workers whose salaries have been approved by the Legislature and are part of the state budget.
She says she plans to call for a review of the administration’s handling of those vacancies at a future meeting of the Appropriations Committee, citing vacancies in the state’s public health nursing program as an ongoing problem.
“The Appropriations Committee makes sure that the funding is there for these positions because we feel that with public health in this state it’s critically important to have these nurses in place,” Rotundo says. “They are our line of defense between the public and health problems. Imagine if we had an epidemic in this state and we didn’t have public health nurses in place.”
“Yes, we are evaluating every single vacancy in public health nursing,” says Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew.
She says her agency is scrutinizing each nursing position to ensure that each is focused on core responsibilities such as infectious disease and the care of vulnerable populations, including children with special needs and the elderly, who are covered under adult protective services. Those priorities, Mayhew says, are targeted with a single goal in mind.
“To make sure that that operation is structured to support those critical populations and those responsibilities within state government,” Mayhew says.
Many of the state vacancies listed on the 40-page list submitted in September to the Appropriations Committee fall within DHHS, ranging from entry-level positions to division heads.
One vacancy that continues to concern state Rep. Drew Gattine is a state medical director post that oversees Medicare and Medicaid operations in the state. The Westbrook Democrat, who is the House Chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, says the two programs provide $2.7 billion a year in health care services to thousands of Mainers.
“For what’s basically a gigantic insurance company of that size to not have a medical director for a long period of time who is guiding the medical policy, not just the payment policies and the billing policies but the actual medical leadership of an organization that provides $2.7 billion of care every year, I think is vitally important,” Gattine says. “So I think it would be great for Maine people if these jobs were filled more quickly and more expeditiously.”
Gattine’s suggestion that the division may be lacking in medical leadership is characterized by Mayhew as “irrational”. And she says the department is functioning at a level of efficiency that Democratic administrations could only wish for.
“Where is the discussion about how well managed the Medicaid program is that we are not in a state of financial crisis, which prior to this administration dominated the decision-making within this Medicaid program?” Mayhew says. “That we are focused on improving primary care and actually transforming the management of the Medicaid program, the MaineCare program in Maine?”
Since July 2, the governor has asked his commissioners to explain the need for every position and to include alternatives to achieve the same goals and duties without additional hiring.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public Broadcasting Network.