[A series of posts which critique common misconceptions about the rural poor and working poor, held by media, politicians, and ordinary citizens.]
There are many people who don’t know about the rural poor: some of them write op-ed columns in New York (Part 1), others are hometown boys turned state politicians who still don’t seem to get it (Part 2). But what about the people who guide policy at our state’s largest department — the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) — the one which could have the biggest positive impact on the lives of the poor and working poor in our state? Do they know about the rural poor?
Be forewarned: having good intentions and the “right” educational credentials are no guarantee that you will in fact help the lives of those most in need. Here’s a cautionary tale, from the DHHS.
When Rick Snyder ran for governor in 2010, he claimed that he was the one tough nerd that Michigan needed. And he had the educational and professional resume to back up that claim — more than a few Democrats and independents voted for the man they thought would be an ideal non-political “problem solver” for an ailing Michigan.
But you know what they say: it’s usually the people who claim to be “non-ideological” who are the most ideological of all. Their politics are so deeply held that they consider their beliefs to be just commonsense — not the product of a specific political ideology. And so it was with Snyder, whose “solutions” hewed closely to Republican orthodoxy on tax cuts, small government, and the “inefficiency” of welfare programs.
In 2015, Snyder used his executive authority to merge the Department of Community Health (DCH) and the Department of Human Services (DHS) in order to create a new agency: the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The man picked to head this new agency was Nick Lyon, a 12-year veteran of the former DCH (prior to that he was a fiscal analyst in state government). In an op-ed in Bridge Magazine, Lyon praised the decision to merge the two departments as opening up a “river of opportunity” (Snyder’s metaphor) that would improve service to people who needed help.
Lyon towed the line on Snyder’s merger plan, but he was no partisan Republican hack: he had begun his tenure at DCH in 2003, under Granholm. With a degree from Yale University in economics and public policy, and 25 years in state government under Republican and Democratic governors, he was considered a non-partisan, career civil servant.
But the 2015 merger forming the DHHS also happened to coincide with a huge public health threat: the Flint water crisis. When a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires Disease, which many believe was related to the change in Flint’s water source, became known in January 2015, Lyon’s DHHS failed to issue a public advisory for an entire year. The outbreak was responsible for at least a dozen deaths, and the illnesses of many more. For this and other allegations of misconduct, Nick Lyon now stands accused of involuntary manslaughter.
Incredibly, Lyon remained the head of DHHS, even as Snyder’s own Attorney General, Bill Schuette, brought charges against him. And of course in that final year of his term, Lyon oversaw the implementation of the Universal Caseload program (UCL) in Northern Michigan counties, that is one of the principal causes of the current dysfunction in the department.
Many Democrats think that the DHHS is back in good hands, now that Whitmer is in the driver’s seat and she’s selected her own DHHS head. Robert Gordon does have an impressive resume that boasts two Ivy League degrees — from Harvard and Yale — and a career that took him through the Obama administration, before arriving in Michigan.
But liberals take note: Whitmer has already back-pedaled on her campaign talk of splitting the DHHS into its two former entities, which some people believe would be more manageable. And in a Feb. 13 DHHS press release, Gordon signaled that his department was committed to making the UCL program work — that the program was the best way to provide “faster and more reliable service” for clients, and “greater efficiency” for the agency. But with demonstrably worse service in counties that have switched to UCL, the obvious question is: “efficient” for whom? Certainly not for the DHHS recipients who have experienced months-long delays for services they are entitled to. It’s only a little over a month since Gordon took charge, but a micropolitan wonders: meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
So, Aesop, what’s the lesson? When clever people start developing programs to maximize “efficiency”, we need to start asking that old Latin question favored by lawyers: cui bono? Who benefits? Are these bright boys proposing solutions for a cash-strapped agency, whose state funding has still not reached pre-recession levels? Or are they real solutions designed to improve the lives of people at the bottom of our economic system?
As we watch a changing of the guard in Lansing, liberals need to be aware of their blind spots. One of these is their over-confidence in our nation’s elite educational institutions. As someone who came up through those institutions, and taught in them, take it from me: an Ivy+ degree does not guarantee that you have the smarts and commonsense required to know what is best for other people. These academic credentials can, in fact, create the dangerous illusion that you do know what’s best, that you deserve your station in life, and that you are the best positioned to know about other people because you took a seminar with other clever people. Did Nick Lyon ever imagine that he would be on trial, accused of involuntary manslaughter?
Dear reader: life presents many twists and turns, and there is always more to the lives of other people than what you see on the surface. The best qualifications are curiosity and empathy. Once armed with those, you will find there is still much to learn.
Micropolitan 