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« Russia Nails Islamist Terrorist Who Lead Beslan Massacre | Main | Senate Endorsements » July 10, 2006Qualifacts Update: Damage Control
[Previous Qualifacts coverage here.] Let's review the Sun's editorial line by line: News that TennCare Director J.D. Hickey is leaving TennCare to become CEO of a company Gov. Phil Bredesen owns the major interest in certainly raises eyebrows. But if we can believe comments from state Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz, and we have no basis for not believing him, Hickey was slated to leave state government anyway.Memo to the editors of the Jackson Sun: You have "no basis for not believing him" because you haven't done the digging and you haven't asked Goetz and Bredesen the hard questions. Here's one: If Hickey truly was "slated to leave state government," why wasn't this fact made public sooner? Hickey gave a week's notice of his departure when two weeks is standard and, for CEOs and executive-level management of large organizations, it is common for them to announce their departure months in advance. Why Hickey's sudden departure? His sudden resignation was announced publicly via a terse press release on Friday afternoon - the traditional day and time that companies and organizations release bad news or potentially damaging news. Bredesen simply took advantage of an opportunity to hire someone he already knew, had confidence in and trusted. Still, similar acts in many other situations certainly would be frowned upon and be considered conflicts of interest. Bredesen stands to benefit personally by hiring a state employee to run a private business he controls.Bredesen's ownership stake in Qualifacts - a privately-held company - is said to be in a "blind trust," but the Tennessean story Saturday said Bredesen was the majority owner, begging the question, if his holdings really have been in a blind trust for the last three years, how does Bredesen know he's still the majority owner? And now the Jackson Sun indicates Bredesen was involved in Qualifacts' decision to hire Hickey. Was Bredesen actually involved in the hiring of Hickey at Qualifacts? If so, that absolutely screams for an investigation into ethics violations and conflict-of-interest. Hickey has been TennCare director since July, 2004. He is likely the longest serving TennCare director. The program had 10 directors in 10 years. Hickey also spent 10 months studying TennCare for McKenzie & Co. on behalf of the state. His time as TennCare director has been successful and controversial. Now he will return to the private sector.193,000 sick, elderly, disabled and poor Tennesseans lost their healthcare coverage under the Bredesen-Hickey management team. The Sun says that's "successful." It is not uncommon for talented people to move from the private sector to government and back many times over their careers. They bring much to the table in both directions. Bredesen is a good example of a successful business owner who moved into government and he has been equally successful there. The problem we have is the "appearance" of a conflict of interest. The state has had more than its share of ethics issues in recent years. At this point, anything that smacks of public officials benefiting personally from activities involving the state are simply too hard to overlook.And yet, they're overlooking it. That's the point of their editorial, which can be paraphrased this way: "We know it looks bad, but we're not going to do our job and ask the hard questions. We're just going to take the administration's word for it." We admit to being conflicted over Bredesen's decision.Just not "conflicted" enough to dig into it. Perhaps we can resolve it this way. Everybody who backed and voted for Bredesen, including this newspaper, knew they were backing a business executive of the first rank. We wanted a state CEO, we got one and he has acted as one. In the end, his decision to hire Hickey was a hard-nosed, classic business decision. We shouldn't be surprised.Ah, now we get to the crux of the Jackson Sun's decision not to look deeper into the Hickey/Qualifacts/Bredesen story: They endorsed Bredesen. They don't investigate politicians they like. The mainstream Tennessee media may be ignoring this story. Bloggers aren't. Posted in Tennessee Government News
Comments
Killer post, Bill. Posted by: brittney at July 10, 2006 11:30 AMBill I took the liberty of posting your today's comments on the Jackson Sun story on my blog with accreditation to you and your blog. In my opinion this deal is all part of the big story of cutting off of the program the 15% of the folks on TennCare that utilized 75% of the cost. Those are the roughly 170,000 chronically ill who were on the program because they could not get commercial insurance. Posted by: George Haley at July 10, 2006 12:37 PMPost a comment
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The Jackson Sun is doing damage control for the Bredesen administration over the departure of TennCare director J.D. Hickey to run a healthcare software company that Gov. Bredesen owns - but even the Jackson Sun admits in an 