Texas lawmakers rebuke state health officials for contract flap — again
Lawmakers called the contracting problems a systemic failure of the agency, which has struggled for years to follow proper procurement processes. Officials inaccurately scored an estimated
Hours before Health and Human Services Commissioner
Peterson, who oversaw the agency's procurement process, joins three other staff members who have left the agency recently.
The latest errors have led to the cancellation of managed care contracts to serve low-income children, delays in launching a new database to track birth and death statistics statewide and intervention by a disappointed Gov.
"I'm sitting before you because we failed. We let you down. We let the governor down. We let taxpayers down. We let our vendors down. We let our fellow professionals down," Smith told the committee during Wednesday's hearing. "Everyone deserves better."
Some lawmakers said Smith's apology was too late.
"We can't keep coming back to this trough and not have resolutions to these types of issue. You're the guy in charge. The buck stops here, right?" said Rep.
Bungled contracts
Earlier this month, agency officials canceled five managed care contracts worth
On Monday, the State Auditor's Office released a report highlighting a series of problems with how the agency awarded a
Among steps Smith said he was taking to address contracting issues is to temporarily hire a quality control team to double-check the scoring work of the agency as well as to internally audit the agency's procurement process. The state auditor's office and the inspector general are also doing reviews.
Rep.
Rep. Mary González, D-
Smith said the procurement department responsible for the scoring issues has vacancies, but Rep.
"We're trying to do things the same old way. I'm not sure that's really the answer," he said.
Outsourcing
The agency handles about 108,000 contracts worth
Rep.
Problems with the 21CT deal revolved around a
"We have created the largest state agency in the country and when you make something this big and you have
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