To the editor:

I would like to offer a belated but serious response to Gov. Paul LePage’s question, “Where is the outrage?” about Maine as a “nanny state.”

I, too, wondered of the whereabouts of that emotion as I read that DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew knew, at least by January of this year, that MaineCare benefits were being paid erroneously to some 19,000 people who were not entitled to them.

I am outraged that the DHHS commissioner, a member of LePage’s administration, spent hours and hours before the Appropriations Committee testifying to dropping health care coverage for some 20,000 eligible people, all the while knowing her department was still paying millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to people everyone already agreed were no longer eligible for benefits.

This predicament makes me wonder where is the governor’s outrage that Commissioner Mayhew, someone he appointed, withheld this essential information while he was ranting about Democratic “obstructionists” and while he instructed her to “stop cooperating” with the Appropriations Committee.

Yes, Gov. LePage, where, indeed, is the outrage? I find it unacceptable that the administration remained silent while being aware of the “computer glitch” that was pouring state money down the toilet.

And by the way, where is Commissioner Mayhew’s resignation? Seriously.

Jennifer DeChant,
Bath

letters@timesrecord.com