Karen Heller: DPW is failing its mission

'Our mission is to promote, improve, and sustain the quality of family life; break the cycle of dependency; promote respect for employees; protect and serve Pennsylvania's most vulnerable citizens; and manage our resources effectively."

This is the declared role of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare, charged with helping 2.1 million elderly, poor, and disabled Pennsylvanians.

Since Gary D. Alexander became secretary last January, the department has been in the news constantly, almost daily this year, and not in a good way.

Rather than assisting the poor, DPW seems to have gone to battle with them.

Alexander recently came under fire for hiring Robert W. Patterson, the editor of an ultraconservative faith-based journal. In his writings, Patterson condemns birth control, working women - and the very programs assisting the poor that he was hired to help administer.

Under Alexander's leadership, eliminating fraud, waste and abuse have been DPW priorities. In the fall, he wrote that his agency had drastically reduced state Medicaid enrollment. "We have removed from our rolls more than 100,000 ineligible people, including people who have died or moved out of state, saving taxpayers more than $34 million."

Last week, the department basically said whoops, never mind, due to changes in reporting methods, enrollment has actually increased by 23,000 people.

However, in other news, in the final five months of last year, 88,000 children lost Medicaid coverage. But now, DPW is checking those numbers.

DPW now proposes stringent food-stamp eligibility guidelines that would disqualify low-income individuals. Even though the government considers them poor, those people under age 60 with $2,000 in savings and other assets would be denied. Seniors with $3,250 in savings and assets would also be cut. These asset tests were tossed by 35 states, yet Pennsylvania plans to implement them in May. The move attracted the ire of officials in the federal government, which funds the program.

Hired to streamline the agency and cut waste, Alexander touted his success in Rhode Island where, his bio states, "he transformed health and human services into a value-oriented and performance-driven system focused on the needs of the consumer."

Alexander heads the state's largest agency, with 17,000 employees and $10.6 billion in state funding. Even so, he found time last summer to launch Smart Alex Consulting L.L.C., acquiring and managing rental real estate - in Rhode Island.

As for managing resources effectively, Alexander hired four special assistants, their salaries totaling almost $400,000. Assistant Ronald Semerjian earns nearly $100,000 and previously ran a small printing business in Rhode Island. DPW refused to release the assistants' resumés.

Patterson, with a salary of $104,470, edits The Family in America, a position he retained after Alexander hired him last fall. Patterson isn't a fan of women working outside the home, a proven solution in helping achieve DPW's mandate to "break the cycle of dependency." In his articles, he has criticized Medicaid, food stamps, and health insurance for children, all overseen by DPW.

As The Inquirer's Angela Couloumbis and Amy Worden were preparing to publish Patterson's editorial views and post, he resigned Jan. 17. A spokeswoman refused to state why Alexander had hired Patterson or whether the secretary was familiar with the editor's views.

Last week, Patterson remained on the payroll, due to depart Tuesday.

But Patterson is a symptom, a sign of the deeper problems of Smart Alex - incompetence, Dickensian standards, a lack of transparency.

Under Alexander, DPW has failed to articulate a clear mission other than being "value-oriented" and "performance-driven," as though it were Home Depot instead of the agency charged with serving the Commonwealth's most vulnerable citizens.