That clinking, clanking sound
The O has picked up on the story I wrote about yesterday concerning the recent unfavorable audit of the State of Oregon's woeful mental health "system." The O's write-up is stashed behind the Paywall of Pity, but here's a choice nugget:
The audit tracked how the health authority spent funds allocated by the Legislature in 2021 and 2022 to increase culturally responsive behavioral health services by boosting recruitment of providers of color, rural providers and others from underrepresented backgrounds.
Auditors lauded some “positive results” of the spending, which included:...
- $16 million to repay student loans for 281 diverse mental health providers.
Quite an interesting expenditure. $16 million for 281 people works out to about $57,000 per person. That ain't hay.
It begs some questions. Like: Who are these "diverse providers" whose student loans were paid off? Who selected them? What were the selection criteria? What were the conditions of the payoffs? Did the recipients commit to give anything in return? What are they doing now that was worth the money for the state? Did they pay taxes on the loan payoffs?
As I said the other day, the loosey-goosey cash flow through the health department is a perfect recipe for waste and corruption. Someone should be asking more questions about those student loans, along with a lot of other things. $57,000 each for 281 people – sheesh!
$16 million to repay student loans for 281 SEIU members.
ReplyDeleteSo many more unanswered questions this begets. Are these providers even in the state of Oregon AND working as ‘diverse’ healthcare providers? What makes them ‘diverse’, is their something about the provider or the recipient that is ‘diverse’?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of weird, the quasi-governmental Oregon State Bar gives money collected from mandatory dues to repay student loans for some of the best compensated and benefited young lawyers in Oregon, the ones who got jobs as prosecutors and public defenders. The “Loan Repayment Assistance Program” is a pure cash giveaway, taking bar dues from lawyers struggling to make it in private practice and giving it to lawyers already on the public payroll and provided with access to the 10 year public service loan forgiveness program. Until recently, they didn’t even have a limit on household income, so “struggling” lawyers working for public service agencies with spouses working for big bucks tall-building firms were enjoying this fabulous tax-free slush payment, thanks to the largess of the OSB taking the money from lawyers who weren’t lucky enough to get those jobs and giving it to those who were. What a screwy deal.
ReplyDeleteWell good news from Tri-Met> they are eliminating late night MAX lines and replacing them with buses so they can do "maintenance". What are the zombies going to do now?
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