Lege Lines: HHSC Chief Janek gets grilled, transportation moves, and more

Schadenfreude: a German term, literally translated as "harm-joy," meaning taking pleasure in the discomfort of others. It's hard not to imagine that anyone who faced a tough grilling from Kyle Janek when he was a senator was feeling a little glee when the Health and Human Services commissioner took a roasting on Feb. 18 from the Senate Finance Committee over the infamous 21CT contract. The attack began, unsurprisingly, with Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who has already called for Janek's resignation (see "Whitmire: Janek Must Go From Health and Human Services," Jan. 15). The dean of the Senate bluntly asked, "How can this committee have confidence in your oversight of these agencies?"

However, this was just the beginning of a blistering bipartisan cross-examination that centered on the no-bid contract deal with 21CT, an Austin-based IT firm that was supposed to detect Medicaid fraud, but ended up costing Texans $110 million for little return. And this was not the only contract under scrutiny. Lawmakers also pushed hard on a telecommunications deal with AT&T that exploded from $1 million to $105 million. Then there was a second, separate no-bid deal – this one with Accenture to process Medicaid claims – a contract that only existed because the state fired Xerox from doing the same job. Then there were the massive pay raises for politically connected employees, and a hair-raising dissection of nepotism: Janek's chief of staff, Erica Stick, was de facto supervisor to chief counsel Jack Stick, her husband, and approved a highly unusual $97,020 academic reimbursement to Jan­ek's deputy chief of staff, Casey Haney, who also happened to be Stick's chief of staff back when he was a state rep. "That's a pretty obvious conflict," said Whitmire.

Voices were raised as Janek became confrontational with Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Hous­ton, after she pressed him on his relationship with Haney. There was a personal tinge, since Haney was with a campaign running against Huffman in a 2008 special election to replace none other than Janek (Huffman described Haney as "a hitman&quot . Janek banged his hand on the desk repeatedly as tempers frayed, and by the end of the meeting, Huffman said that "I just don't think he's in a position to lead a multibillion-dollar agency."

In a moment of contrition, Janek admitted he had made personnel decisions that were "poorly handled," but he ended on a pugnacious note. "I find problems, I fix them, and if they get me into hot water because I now demonstrated there's a problem some place, so be it."

Read more: http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2015-02-27/lege-lines/