Tag: DHHS

More bureaucratic micromanagement at DHHS

April 17, 2013 at 2:37 pmCategory:Uncategorized

by

Aldona WosIs anyone else out there starting to get the impression that North Carolina DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos is bit of a…a…how shall I put this?

A control freak?

First, it was the ill-fated dress code edict. Then it was the rather remarkable comment about the “danger” of government transparency.

And now it’s… Signature-gate!

As of next Monday, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Servces will apparently have a new, official three-page policy specifying how Department employees will sign their names on emails.

As you can see by clicking here, we are not making this up.

According to the document obtained by NC Policy Watch, as of April 22, DHHS employees must comply with the “DHHS Email Signature policy.” Read More…

Competing Medicaid op-eds: Specifics best platitudes

April 15, 2013 at 11:56 amCategory:Uncategorized

by

Over the weekend, the Wilmington StarNews published a pair of competing op-eds on the subject of Gov. McCrory’s Medicaid privatization plan – one by Adam Linker of the N.C. Health Access Coalition and another by HHS Secretary Aldona Vos.  

Unfortunately, the two pieces serve as a kind of microcosm of the first few months of the McCrory administration’s public performance. Read More…

Scrutiny over Dianna Lightfoot moves to voter registration questions

February 8, 2013 at 11:26 amCategory:Uncategorized

by

Dianna Lightfoot is facing more questions, after a Winston-Salem news outlet discovered she’d registered to vote using an address of a UPS store.

Dianna Lightfoot

Dianna Lightfoot

Lightfoot, 61, of Winston-Salem, resigned yesterday morning after being appointed two days earlier by new N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos to heading the state’s pre-K and child development division. Lightfoot’s resignation (more about that here) came after comments and positions she’d taken  criticizing government-run early education programs and Tea Party-related causes surfaced. Those comments included a comment from her now-deactivated Twitter account in which she referred to women appointed in the Obama Administration as a “butch bunch.” Lightfoot Tweet

The news about the voter registration issues was first reported Thursday morning by the Camel City Dispatch, a relatively new independent, non-profit news website in Winston-Salem that found Lightfoot registered to vote in the spring of 2012 using the address of a UPS store at 353 Jonestown Road, a UPS store where Lightfoot has an address. State elections law requires that individuals use their residential, and not mailing address, when registering to vote.

Providing false or misleading information on a voter registration form can lead to a lower-level felony charge.

The news was later picked by the Winston-Salem Journal, which ran a story today that included an interview from Lightfoot’s mother who said Lightfoot had been devastated by the intense media attention this week.

DHHS has not chosen a successor to Lightfoot.

UPDATE (added since original publication): Robert Coffman, the director of elections in Forsyth County, said he will refer to matter to his three-member board, who can then ask for the state board of elections to look into the matter, or the local district attorney. Prosecution over voter registration address matters are rare, he added, and his office is waiting to see if the voter, Lightfoot, contacts them to change her voter registration to her residential address. That hasn’t happened yet.

New DENR Secretary urged senior staff to consider attending presentation by climate change denier

February 7, 2013 at 12:17 pmCategory:Uncategorized

by

Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies has an excellent story this morning about yesterday’s through-the-looking-glass “science” lecture at the General Assembly by self-appointed climate expert John Droz.

As Sturgis reports:

His [Droz's] slideshow presentation, titled “The Assault on Science,” was a compilation of claims purporting to show that science is in danger from a hostile conspiracy involving the scientific elite, environmentalists, educators, and the media — but his own sources were rather unscientific, to say the least.

Among the publications Droz cited to make his case were Whistleblower, the monthly magazine companion of WorldNetDaily, a website that promotes conspiracy theories about topics such as President Obama’s citizenship; Quadrant, a conservative Australian magazine that was involved in a scandal over publishing fraudulent science; and the Institute for Creation Research, a Texas outfit that rejects evolution and promotes Biblical creationism and the notion that “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the Creation Week.”

Perhaps the most important and disturbing part of Sturgis’ story, however, was this paragraph that appeared near the end: Read More…

New HHS Secretary wows Estonian Jon Stewart

December 14, 2012 at 11:22 amCategory:Uncategorized

by

We still don’t know a whole lot about North Carolina’s new Secretary of Health and Human Services-to-be Aldona Wos, but it does appear that she can be a compelling TV interview. Be sure to watch all three-plus minutes of the video below to see how convincing she was to an Estonian TV personality (a guy who seems to be some kind of Estonian Jon Stewart) as she extolled the genius of George W. Bush during her tenure as ambassador to the small Baltic nation.

YouTube Preview Image