By Josh Moon
Alabama Political Reporter
Over the course of 22 months, Alabama Medicaid doled out more than $3 million to purchase office and computer equipment that Alabama Auditor Jim Zeigler said was mostly meant to facilitate the agency’s participation in the automated CARES program, records supplied by Zeigler’s office show.
Zeigler said that after reading a story in APR that documented Alabama Medicaid spending $500,000, authorized by the Office of Information Technology, to purchase furniture for the CARES program, he requested all agency expenses during that timeframe – Sept. 2014 through June 2016 – related to CARES.
“It looks as if someone over there just went on an absolute spending spree,” Zeigler said. “That’s the only way I can describe some of the purchases in there. It’s outrageous.”
The CARES program to date has spent over $40 million in taxpayer dollars to build a system that allows recipients of federal and state assistance to apply for benefits. Government programs such as ADPH’s ALLKids (Alabama’s Subsidized Health Insurance Program), Medicaid’s SOBRA, PlanFirst and Elderly and Disabled services, DHR’s SNAP (Food Assistance) and TANG Subsidized Child Care fall under the CARES project.
The project has been plagued with issues, mostly relating to incompatible software between different divisions, and Medicaid has since pulled out of CARES.
But not before racking up a mountain of questionable purchases, according to the paperwork supplied by Zeigler.
Most notably, in the span of just 16 months, Medicaid purchased more than 1,200 Dell computer monitors, with more than 500 being purchased in one order. Total cost: $206,854.20.
During that same time period, Medicaid also purchased 710 desktop computers to go with the monitors, paying $543,580.
APR asked Medicaid to explain the purchases, but an email seeking a response was not returned.
It wasn’t simply the amount of items purchased that raised eyebrows. It was also the cost of individual units.
There were more than 120 office chairs purchased at $714 per chair. There were five $15,000 office tables, 26 teleconference telephones costing more than $700 each and nearly 200 laptop computers, including 70 costing more than $2,000 each.
Zeigler has ordered the OIT office to stop attempts to sell off the furniture and other items – some of it that was never used – until it can be inventoried. He also broke down the monumental failure of the CARES program.
“Despite all of this spending, the process for registering a patient for nursing home care in the state of Alabama is still handled with ink and paper,” Zeigler said.
