Incompetence

Despite massive tax and spending increases, Oregon’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) deficit continues to climb because the Governor won’t modify pension benefits and investment returns.  The Oregon Health Authority has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars by providing Medicaid to 55,000 people who were ineligible to receive free health care.  Even the hotline we use to report waste, fraud and abuse in Oregon government is wasting money.  When it comes to managing taxpayer resources and effectively delivering services, Governor Kate Brown’s administration is failing us.

Recently we learned that the Oregon Health Authority was providing Medicaid to 55,000 people who were ineligible to receive free government health care.  At an average cost of $430 per month per recipient, that’s over $283 million of your tax dollars wasted. The cost of eliminating the Medicaid backlog cost taxpayers another $4.3 million.

Cover Oregon, the state’s Obamacare website was such an epic fail, it made the national news and a congressional committee called on the Department of Justice to investigate potential criminal actions relating to the website’s development.  In the end, over $300 million of our tax dollars were wasted on a website that never worked.  Not even for a day.

Despite years of promises and massive tax and spending increases, the Oregon Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) deficit has grown to over $25 billion.  That’s what happens when leaders like Governor Kate Brown refuse to even consider reforming PERS by modifying pension benefits and investment returns. Governor Brown’s task force on PERS seems poised to make things even worse.  Governor Brown did propose selling off state agencies to raise some money for PERS, but without real reforms to the system, costs will continue to grow, taking millions of dollars away from our classrooms.

Oregon state agencies have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars under Governor Brown’s watch, from $300 million on a Cover Oregon website that never worked to nearly $300 million in Medicare payments to ineligible patients. How much of Oregon’s hardworking taxpayer dollars will she allow to be wasted before she intervenes?