A disturbingly instructive day
by Chris Fitzsimon
Tuesday in Raleigh brought a scene that has become all too familiar. Television cameras trained on a defiant politician facing a scandal who refuses to talk openly with the media, instead repeating claims that appear to have little basis in reality.
In this case, it was an elected official from coastal North Carolina insisting on blaming others for problems for which he is ultimately responsible and bristling at any suggestion otherwise.
It’s even more maddening because the politician came to office with great promise, a commitment to the right priorities and a warm, engaging personality that serve a leader well, especially in efforts to convince others to support his ideas.
Those qualities were hard to find Tuesday, as the elected official seemed out of touch and angry at reporters, with the people who represent him impugning the integrity of other people in state government.
The politician wasn’t Rep. Thomas Wright facing a House ethics committee hearing about charges of fraud and corruption. It was Governor Mike Easley, scrambling to avoid responsibility for the ongoing disasters in the state’s mental health system most recently highlighted in a five-part series in the News & Observer that revealed widespread abuse and neglect in mental hospitals that may have caused as many as 82 deaths in the last several years.
After being criticized on the editorial pages of several papers for not answering questions about the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse that is part of his administration, Easley appeared a news conference in his Capitol office late Tuesday morning, though calling it a news conference is a stretch.
Easley read a prepared statement in which he complained about the General Assembly not giving his Administration enough power to oversee mental health reform and the Local Management Entities that administer it.
Then he introduced Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton, who gave an update on steps he has taken to respond to problems in the state mental hospitals. Most of his remarks were similar to a presentation he made at a January news conference. Easley then answered a few questions and left, refusing to respond to most reporters’ questions.
He made sure he didn’t have to say anything on his way out. The News & Observer reported that a staff member started a car for Easley outside one door where reporters were waiting, as if he was leaving the Capitol that way. Easley left through a different door and got into another car.
If only as much careful planning had gone into the Administration’s implementation of the 2001 mental health reform efforts.
At the Department of Health and Human Services at 11:30 Tuesday morning, the same time that the abbreviated news conference began, Public Affairs Director Debbie Crane was fired.
She was told that the Governor blamed her for the decision by former DHHS Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom not to talk to News & Observer reporters about Easley’s claim that his administration “vigorously opposed” the 2001 mental health reform legislation.
That would be the legislation that he signed, not vetoed. The same bill that he never publicly criticized, the one that Hooker Odom praised in an op-ed column after Easley signed it.
The News & Observer coverage of the day’s events included a story about Crane’s dismissal and her allegation that the Governor’s press office instructs public affairs directors to delete emails so they aren’t available for public review.
An Easley spokesperson said Crane, a well-respected 18-year-veteran public affairs official, was “dishonest, untruthful and insubordinate,” and interfered with reporters’ access to information.
That is apparently a reference to Crane’s communications with Hooker Odom. It’s hard to believe that Crane is the reason Hooker Odom didn’t confirm that the administration opposed mental health reform in 2001. It is more likely that she didn’t confirm it because it isn’t true, as her own writings and statements by key members of the General Assembly make clear.
The News & Observer’s coverage of Tuesday’s bizarre events included a story with the headline “The governor’s version, and the facts,” that provided evidence to contradict many of Easley’s claims. Not exactly what the Easley spin doctors ordered.
When the day of decoy cars, blame-shifting, and a questionable firing was done, nobody with mental illness was getting better service, no family trying to find substance abuse treatment for a loved one was any more likely to find it, nobody with a child with a developmental disability felt better about the programs that are supposed to help their son or daughter.
But the day wasn’t a total loss. The chaos, disorganization, and the continued unwillingness of Easley to answer questions must have looked familiar to mental health advocates.
For the last several years, that’s also the way the mental health system itself has been run. What a depressing, but instructive day it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment