By J. Patrick Coolican | Editor
Good morning, Reformers,
Gov. Tim Walz’s tenure began in 2019 with a leadership shakeup at the Department of Human Services when his choice to lead the agency, former Sen. Tony Lourey, resigned just a few months into the job, days after key deputies departed. (And they lost Lourey’s Senate seat, ta boot.)
Fast forward seven years, and Walz is again struggling to staff the top of the agency as his second term nears its conclusion, after Jodi Harpstead was allowed to resign last year rather than face termination. DHS then had a temporary commissioner for more than a year.
The Star Tribune reports that Walz’s choice to lead DHS, Shireen Gandhi, may not have had the votes for Senate confirmation, so she was made deputy, while John Connolly, Medicaid director, was swapped in. He then told the staff he’d be undergoing cancer treatment (good luck and get well), so Gandhi will be running things with Andrew Johnson while Connolly’s out for a month, MPR reported.
Set aside the fraud in the 14 high-risk Medicaid programs for a moment. The best any governor can hope for about the Department of Human Services is no news. Even after a 2023 law split off separate agencies for children and another for direct care and treatment of our most profoundly disabled Minnesotans, the Department of Human Services’ remit remains incredibly complex: the caregiver of last resort, helping meet the needs of people with disabilities and typically living in poverty. No one else can do it, but there are myriad partners who can be hostile as frequently as they are helpful: counties and tribes; the federal government; some 300,000 Medicaid providers (h/t Jessie Van Berkel); public unions and the Legislature. This presents managerial, financial, technological, political and human capital problems.
Walz, the former teacher, may have thought he would become an education governor, but to a significant degree, every governor’s tenure is dominated by DHS, and more so as our population ages.
Now add to that stew what Van Berkel reported last week: DHS had to suspend payments to 546 providers over fraud allegations just last year.
As we learned from a recent Walz administration report on program integrity, the agency is built for compassion, not compliance, so consider what a lift that must have been.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, laid down something of an ambitious marker Sunday by focusing her attention on DHS. I sincerely wish her good fortune.
To the news:
Andrea Pedro-Francisco was arrested on her way to work and sent to a Texas detention center a week before she was scheduled to have surgery to remove a large ovarian cyst. (Courtesy photo)
By Max Nesterak
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it will not release a Minnesota woman facing deportation on humanitarian parole to receive surgery to remove a painful, tennis-sized ovarian cyst at risk of causing severe medical complications.
Democratic lawmakers, clergy and human rights advocates have called for the release of Andrea Pedro-Francisco to receive medical care while her asylum application is considered, but ICE informed her lawyer on Tuesday that she must remain in detention.
Pedro-Francisco, a 23-year-old native of Guatemala, has been in ICE detention since being arrested in Burnsville on her way to work cleaning houses during Operation Metro Surge on Feb. 5 — a week before she was scheduled to have surgery to remove the cyst.
By David Lightman
Get off the train at Union Station, walk outside and gasp at that iconic view of the Capitol dome in front of you.
Cross the street and the first thing you run into is a construction site surrounding walled-off Columbus Circle. On the wall is a huge poster of President Donald Trump wearing a hard hat (and a coat and tie).
“Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP,” the sign says.
That’s just the start of what a tourist will encounter as they sightsee in the heart of the nation’s capital. Or these days, the nation’s capital as brought to you by Donald Trump.
Coolican here: Ankara, Turkey of the Erdogan regime in 2014 was probably the creepiest place I’d ever been for its cult of personality. The first job of the next Democratic president will be to destroy all of this humiliating iconography that is so unsuited for a constitutional democracy.
Commentary: Olmstead Plan needs revisions — and maybe a rewrite — to help Minnesotans with disabilities
By Jane McClure
We welcome veteran Twin Cities journalist Jane McClure to our pages with this critical look at the draft of the state’s new Olmstead Plan, which outlines goals for person-centered, integrated care for Minnesotans with disabilities. Jane says its needs revisions:
“One goal is that by June 30, 2027, maltreatment of students with disabilities will decline by at least two students. That’s right: Just two, attached to the remarkable assertion that just 28 students with disabilities were identified and confirmed as victims of maltreatment in 2023.
As the consultants responded: ‘Two students. This would effectively reach 0.001% of the disabled population, and that number is just the tip of the iceberg — maltreatment only counts if it’s reported, which disguises the true extent of said maltreatment. If we want agencies to pursue investigations of maltreatment, this goal is counterintuitive.’
Such modest goals aren’t transformational, as Olmstead is meant to be.”
IN OTHER NEWS
Iran evaluating American proposal | Bloomberg gift link
George Packer’s David Sacks profile | The Atlantic gift link
It’s the age of electricity and America isn’t ready | New York Times gift link with cool graphics.
OH BY THE WAY
Intrigued by James Traub’s reporting from the Eagle Ridge Academy in the west metro and want to focus on one part in particular: Classical education has become right-coded, but there’s no intrinsic reason why it should be. Homer, Oedipus, Plato and Shakespeare are not MAGA, I assure you. As Traub writes:
“Classical schools are traditional, but they are not intrinsically conservative. The classical schoolteachers I’ve spoken to describe their own concerns as ‘prepolitical,’ arising not from current affairs but from the pursuit of enduring principles — truth, beauty and goodness.”
As with every education idea, the problem is that this probably isn’t scalable.
What other old folks were at the Amsterdam last night for Greyboy All Stars? Here’s “Got to Get Me a Job.”
Correspond: [email protected]
Have a great day all! JPC
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