DHHS Is A Black Hole
And Sucking Up The Welfare
Of Maine’s Families With It
Black holes are some of the most amazing things in existence. They bring stability and balance to the universe; and they even shape galaxies like ours. And everything that gets close enough is sucked into its center, never to be seen again in what you could call nature’s recycling program.
However, you may be surprised to know we have one right here on earth. It’s called the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. This isn’t a good thing, because DHHS brings no balance to any universe I know of and seems to be wrecking everything it touches.
Hello, this is Senator Jeff Timberlake of Androscoggin County. I thank you for joining me for this week’s Republican Radio Address.
For years, the Legislature’s bipartisan Government Oversight Committee has been investigating Maine DHHS and the Office of Child and Family Services division since the deaths of several children in 2021 who had some involvement with this agency. But the problems of DHHS go much deeper.
How deep? In addition to the mishandling of child welfare cases, which I’ll get to in a moment, charges against DHHS include unanswered and unreturned calls; unpaid bills to foster parents and daycare centers; an unaccountable, vindictive culture of retaliation against those who complain about any of it; and most recently the deaths of incapacitated adult wards of the State under Maine’s Public Guardianship program.
Our Government Oversight Committee meeting this week focused on the call wait times and abandonment rates that even the federal government is concerned about. The department admitted earlier this year that call wait times were approaching two hours just to speak with an eligibility specialist. And in an August letter from the Center for Medicaid Services to DHHS, CMS said they are concerned that DHHS operations “are impeding equitable access to assistance” for Maine’s citizens seeking Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage.
Yes, you heard that right. Even the federal government is saying DHHS has serious issues.
Then we learned last week that DHHS had an opportunity to intervene in the case of Makinzlee Handrahan, a three-year-old toddler from Edgecomb who died on Christmas Day last year. According to a court affidavit filed in the case charging her mother’s boyfriend with her murder, daycare workers watching Makinzlee noticed she had bruising and scrapes months before her death in October. They did their duty as mandatory reporters in requesting an DHHS investigation.
The agency did, yet they clearly missed something and the girl was dead just two months later. The worst part is it took a court filing to find out this even happened.
Which brings me to what is perhaps the largest concern of DHHS to date, the hundreds of deaths over the past five years involving adult wards of the state. To their credit, a report published last month by The Maine Monitor uncovered the deaths while it was investigating another story.
They said the medical examiner’s office reviewed over 200 deaths of those under public guardianship between 2018 and 2023 and deemed eight as unexplainable. The Maine State Police opened an investigation into at least one of them.
These deaths only came to light through an accidental release of records by the Maine Attorney General’s Office. Otherwise, we would never have known about it although DHHS is required under a 1997 law to notify the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee when such deaths occur.
Yet not a single report has ever been made. Clearly, the law is being ignored; but the reason why is just as important.
As I’ve said several times this year and still believe today, I feel DHHS is too large, too unaccountable to Maine’s people and represents a black hole where no daylight escapes. OCFS need to be separated from DHHS – and its toxic culture – and reformed into its own department to properly execute its focused mission of protecting Maine’s families. I see no other way forward.
Again, this is Senator Jeff Timberlake of Androscoggin County. Thank you for listening.
Senator Jeff Timberlake represents District 17, which includes communities in Androscoggin and Kennebec counties. He is the Senate Republican Lead for the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, and a member of the Government Oversight Committee.
