UPDATED: As expected, after disappearing behind closed doors for "legal advice" and whatnot, the MHBE Board voted to hire Deloitte and install the same system Connecticut employed. Expected to be ready for Nov. 15 open enrollment. Until then, the horse-and-buggy system will remain.
(No, and no April Fools' joke not neither.) In a bold move yet to be voted on, the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange will toss out the existing website and its $125 to $161 million already spent and go with the same system Connecticut uses.
This developing disaster is just another scene in the long-running play called "the website won't work, let's hide that from the public." As a Marylander, I'm furious.
Having repeatedly violated the Maryland Open Meetings Act since 2011 by conducting impermissible discussions in secret, the Exchange Board sees no reason to change its behavior.
According to the Washington Post,
Dori Henry, a spokeswoman for the Maryland exchange, said no decision would be finalized until the board votes on it. “The official line is the same: A decision has not been made,” Henry said. “There will not be anything further coming from the state until a decision is made.”
Oh, the decision's made. You can't expect to discuss all the options for the Maryland exchange in a meeting lastingfrom 5 to 7 p.m.
The meeting will merely ratify, in what the Open Meetings Compliance Board calls a "ceremonial vote," a decision they've already reached outside public view. Expect a unanimous vote and Martin O'Malley or Anthony Brown to trot out ASAPextolling the decision.
You see, it's illegal in Maryland to take up contract awards, particularly to single source suppliers, outside public view. There are a couple cases where parts of the discussion could be secret, but not the entire discussion.
Nothing in the minutes and other meetings materials from the MHBE since December 30 indicates there has been anything substative discussed in public about firing Noridian (it was donein an illegal secret meeting) or anything to do with any of the other contractors involved.
Other documents indicate a boilerplate reliance over the past 3 years on a "legal advice" exception and a "competitive bidding" exception, parroted like clockwork in a standing footnote in MHBE minutes.
Gosh, I hate being vague, but that's what the MHBE has offered the public. Vague, generalized phrases.
Still unresolved:
-- documents missing from 21 of the 34 closed-door meetings in 2012 and 2013 ... docments which a required to be available to the public by state law.
-- no documents (required by state law) at all from nearly a dozen meetings since the MHBE board began meeting in June, 2011.
-- absolutely nothing from the meeting on Dec. 6, 2013, where they canned the exchange executive director, Rebeca Pearce. Sure, the one-line email from Pearce said she's offering her resignation. The question is only who told her to go.
So let's watch the disaster play out and see if the prediction here is correct: absolute contempt for transparency and good government practices by Martin O'Malley, Anthony Brown, Josh Sharfstein (board chairman and cabinet secretary) and the people on the MHBE board. They, by the way, as high-ranking agency officials, PHDs, and lawyers who can't find the state's Open Meetings Act with both hands.
I'll post more ... whether I am right or wrong.