Last week Dannette Smith announced her resignation as director of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) effective August 4, 2023. I was not surprised by the announcement. I am not suggesting that Smith did a poor job as director. Dannette Smith did about as well as any director could have done given the set of circumstances she inherited and the state of affairs of DHHS that she was dealt when she first took over the Department four years ago.
DHHS is Nebraska’s largest state agency. The agency employs approximately 5,000 people and has an annual budget of $6.3 billion, which includes both state and federal dollars. The agency is comprised of five divisions, namely behavioral health, children and family services, developmental disabilities, Medicaid and long-term care, and public health.
When Dannette Smith took over as director in 2019 DHHS was already in a heap of trouble. Let me explain. In 2018 the voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box, and DHHS took two long years to roll out a new plan which was ultimately rejected by the federal government. DHHS also oversees the state’sYouth Rehabilitation and Treatment Centers, which were also already in disarray. In August 2019 mismanagement of the facility in Geneva allowed several of the resident girls to trash their living quarters and set off the fire sprinklers. This resulted in the girls having to be moved to a temporary facility in Kearney, DHHS closing the facility in Geneva, and DHHS opening up a new facility in Lincoln. Adding insult to injury was the fact that St. Francis Ministries, an outside non-profit contract company from Kansas City, which had already been hired before Smith arrived to oversee child welfare cases in Omaha, was mismanaging state monies and was about to ask for an emergency bailout.
