Jackson Jambalaya

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid issued the following statement.

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid (DOM) routinely submits detailed travel information to the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) for processing and makes every effort to fulfill Gov. Phil Bryant’s commitment to transparency in government spending.

Transparency Mississippi does not accurately reflect the amount of travel documentation DOM submits to DFA. Neither Executive Director David Dzielak nor any other DOM employee has access to enter information directly into Transparency Mississippi.

Rather, information is uploaded from SPAHRS, the State-Wide Payroll and Human Resource System, and DOM staff is unaware of how information entered into SPAHRS flows to the Transparency Mississippi website.
The internal DOM process is as follows. Any DOM employee going on work-related travel must obtain multiple levels of approval, including all supervisory levels and executive leadership. A DFA Travel Authorization form is completed and signed by those leaders, in addition to a DOM Registration Authorization form. Those forms must be approved by the Accounting department and filed with the travel coordinator. Once the trip is complete, the employee fills out a detailed Travel Voucher form with required documentation, which is then submitted for appropriate reimbursement.

The travel coordinator enters information into SPAHRS. Then, the accounting director gives final DOM-agency approval in SPAHRS. At that point, twice a week, all of that information is submitted to DFA for their review and approval of each travel request individually before the employee is reimbursed.

DOM has continually provided detailed travel information and submitted it to the best of our ability in lieu of having written instructions and direction from DFA. Going forward, DOM will work with DFA to improve the process and ensure the information provided is available through Transparency Mississippi.

Kingfish note: This press release was issued in response to a Geoff Pender column that was published in the Clarion-Ledger last Sunday.  Mr. Pender wrote:

I attempted (unsuccessfully) to help a colleague find something on transparency.mississippi.gov. And, because I’m weird and have in the past spent many, many hours going through such records, I clicked on the “travel” button. This is supposed to let you easily see itemized state government travel spending by agency, by employee and by location.

Some of you might recall I’ve written a wee bit over the years about state government employee travel — from Alaska to the Virgin Islands; from Bermuda to Vail, Colorado; and of course, Destin, Florida. Mississippi government apparently cannot operate without hundreds of government-funded trips to conferences, seminars and meetings in Destin. The state could probably save a lot of money by just buying a large condo there and letting state agencies time-share it.

But I digress.

The travel page on the Mildly Translucent Mississippi site has columns and rows that are supposed show the public the dates of a government employee’s trip, the destination, the title of the meeting or seminar, the purpose, the type of expense for which they’re being reimbursed and the amount. Sounds simple, right?

Sometimes the public can glean details of a trip, sometimes they can’t. It basically depends on what the government official or agency feels like sharing with the Department of Finance and Administration, which runs the Mildly Translucent site.

But then there’s state Medicaid Director Dr. David Dzielak, who was reimbursed for nearly $11,000 in travel and his entire agency, which was reimbursed $519,000 in travel for fiscal 2017. Apparently, they don’t feel like telling the public squat about their travel. So they don’t.

When Dzielak travels out of state, and he does so frequently, he lists the destination as “out of state travel.” He lists the title of the meeting or seminar as “office of executive services (EX97)” whatever the heck that means. He lists the meeting purpose for all his trips as “Any out of state meetings and/or activities pertaining to the office of executive services.”....

For instance, taxpayers can tell they paid for Dzielak to go somewhere out of state July of last year for some sort of meeting and/or activities and he spent $1,259.15 on lodging, $582.60 on a “public carrier” (I’m betting it was an airplane), and $186.91 on “other” expenses.

Why, thank you for sharing, Dr. Dzielak. I hope you went somewhere nice and had fun at any out-of-state meetings and/or activities you might have attended pertaining to the office of executive services.

Most in Dzielak’s agency appear to follow his lead on their expense reports, at least according to the Mildly Translucent site. For instance, Medicaid spokeswoman Erin Barham traveled out of state a few times last year. She went to “out of state” to the “office of public relations (info)” meetings three times. The purpose of the meetings was “any out of state meetings and/or activities pertaining to the office of public relations.” She also traveled in state some. She went to “Instate travel” a few times for “any instate meetings and/or activities pertaining to the office of public relations.” Her total travel reimbursement for the year was $4,995.

It should be noted that a few employees in Medicaid appeared to slip up and indicate where they traveled, such as to Yazoo City or Pascagoula, but most keep it close to the vest.

UPDATE: DFA issued this press release:

— In response to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid’s recent press release dated August 18, 2017, titled Clarification: Mississippi Division of Medicaid Transparent with Information, the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) offers the following response.

While DFA is the host of Transparency Mississippi, the information in Transparency is dependent entirely upon the level of detail entered by each individual agency. In the instances in question, Division of Medicaid’s (DOM) out-of-state travel was posted to the system using a generic code not suited for out-of-state travel that did not provide detailed information about the purpose and destination of each trip.

The Division of Medicaid is correct in stating that neither Dr. David Dzielak, DOM Executive Director, nor any other DOM employee has access to enter information directly into Transparency Mississippi, however there are processes to be followed in the Statewide Payroll And Human Resource System (SPAHRS) in order to accurately reflect the travel details. DFA provides quarterly training and a call center to answer any travel-related questions.
DFA has communicated with DOM the recommended method to ensure all pertinent details are fully displayed in Transparency. Given the recent discussion about Transparency and travel, DFA will distribute these same recommendations to all agency heads.