Welch goes from comptroller's office to HHSC
Texas Weekly11/10/2006
Ken Welch, the funds management guru at the comptroller's office (the guy who actually does know where all the state's money is at any given time), left that agency for the Health and Human Services Commission, where he's the new budget and fiscal policy director.
HoustonChronicle.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4312101.html
Letters: No horror story on CHIP
THE Chronicle's gratuitous insults directed at the state's effort to modernize its social service eligibility system and the company that won the bid to help with that process, Accenture, should be retracted(see the Oct. 29 editorial "Horror story").
Ever since the overhauling of the system began, the Texas StateEmployees Union has led the effort to derail the program and to undo the social service reforms passed by the 78th Legislature. Part of its strategy has involved tarring the reputation of the firm that is helping the state implement the new system. And now the Chronicle appears to have bought into the misguided efforts of TSEU, referring to Accenture as "Bermuda-based," as if where it was incorporated has any bearing on its work for the state *doesn't it? Why would taxpaying Texans want a company based in BERMUDA (because they ARE based in Bermuda) taking care of the poor in Texas? Why else, other than make a profit on the poor, would Accenture even WANT this job?*. In fact, Accenture employs 27,000 people domestically, including more than 3,000 in Texas , and pays federal and state taxes. The editorial tossed a vile canard at the company by calling it "aspin-off of disgraced Arthur Andersen," even though Accenture was incorporated more than a decade before Andersen's implosion. In covering the eligibility system and the Children's Health InsuranceProgram, the Chronicle pushes anecdotal accounts of processing errors as the main cause of declines in the size of CHIP, when, in fact, the following are the leading reasons for CHIP disenroll-ment (based on October 2006 data available on the Health and Human Service's Website):
"45 percent didn't return renewal packet" *packets they never got? packets they received and turned in more than once? Hmmmm.*
"19 percent exceeded CHIP income limits"
"17 percent were Medicaid eligible"
"11 percent didn't pay the renewal fee" *renewal fees that clients never got a notice about until AFTER the fee was due and the case was already closed?*
"5 percent aged out of the program
The Chronicle would do well to leave off the wild allegations and join an essential program to bring Texas ' social services into the 21stcentury.
BRENT CONNETT Austin *Do you work for Accenture?*
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2 comments:
When you google Brent Connett and see that he is a "policy analyst" for the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, it all is clear. One would think that the definition of a conservative is a person who abhors waste of tax dollars, yet here we have a "conservative" who will support a global profiteer like Accenture even as tax dollars are drained away from the tax payers and from the poor people we are supposed to be serving. It just shows how hypocritical they are. We know Accenture is profiting even as they delay and incorrectly providing federal benefits. It's just nuts.
I was checking some more on Brent Connett and see that his boss at the TCCRI is Tom Delay's indicted buddy John Colyandro. A little more looking and guess what? The TCCRI was instrumental in writing HB2292 for Arlene Wohlgemuth who was (I am not sure if she still is) on the board of directors for them. In 2003 she wrote a big old thank you to them for being so instrumental in providing the framework for 2292. So it makes sense that they get a little defensive when the facts get in the way of their little masterpiece.
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