Another new trainee was Sara, who came from the Medical Complex like me. Sara had worked as a registration clerk for five years and was now a caseworker trainee just like me. Sara claimed the only reason for her hiring was that she spoke Spanish. I’m sure that was possible, but I suspect that there was a better reason. Sara’s aunt was a well-known supervisor in the Social Service department years earlier. Good to see how those affirmative action lawsuits put a damper on all that nepotism practiced by the evil white men.
One story I heard while in training still makes me chuckle. A training supervisor said that when she was a worker, she happened upon a young boy in the waiting room on 12th and Vliet. The boy was barefoot, and it was cold outside and getting colder by the day. When she and her fellow caseworkers saw this kid, they felt sorry for him and his mother and expedited the case so the mother could go out and buy the kid shoes. Several days later, the same boy was back in the waiting room still barefoot but with a different mother. The caseworkers discovered the people were traveling gypsies, and they were just trading the kids back and forth to collect money. I think the supervisor told the story to make us realize that things were not always what they seemed.
Finally, with the training ended, we were all completely overwhelmed with information.
All I could do was take my manuals, which, when stacked up, were more than a foot thick and find a zone. As the training wound down, all of us trainees got a list of open zones. Each of us new caseworkers would get a zone, and each zone had about 400
welfare cases that we were supposed to maintain. We were then allowed to pick which zone we wanted, and hopefully, we would get it. I almost got stuck working on 12th and Vliet, but luckily, I was able to get a zone on 9th and Mitchell on the south side. Things weren’t that much different at the south side office, though. All I did was go from the north side ghetto to the south side ghetto. At least I was able to escape Vera’s omen, plus anything was better than working at the Medical Complex.
I was closer to home now, and there were more restaurants on the south side. I was assigned to work at 9th and Mitchell or what we called the “Hills” building. It was a department store at one time. That the neighborhood had seen better days was an understatement. The county Human Services occupied two floors of the building. Other people in the building worked there for other agencies. For some reason, the county caseworkers just weren’t well-liked by anyone it seemed.
The only reason I wanted the zone that I got was I realized it was halfway between the smoke break room and the bathroom. It was perfect, I thought. By this point, I was more interested in comfort over a career as I finally began to realize that Vera’s statements weren’t far off the mark. I didn’t meet the supervisor until after I started. Her name was Peggy, and I discovered she was quite knowledgeable about the work, and she also knew where all the good restaurants were. Peggy was the unit supervisor, and each unit contained ten zones. All of the unit supervisors answered to Norma, who was the section supervisor. Norma, in turn, answered to Eva, the assistant director. Eva spent most of her time on the slot machines at Potawatomi, or so went the rumor. Other than that, no one seemed to know what Eva did.
All of the caseworkers had a cubicle, which did nothing to block the noise. I had what was called an ongoing zone which only contained regular cases. Adjacent to my cubicle was Leann’s cubicle. Leann was an intake worker who interviewed clients and processed
applications. Leann’s husband also worked for Milwaukee County at the Schlitz brewery.
Next to her cubicle was Tom. He claimed Native American heritage, but as far as I could tell, the only reservation he ever set foot on was the Potawatomi casino. I suspected he had used that as a way into the county service. Whatever works, I guess. Tom’s mother worked in the department as well. Tom was a specialist worker who was supposed to help monitor reports and help Peggy run the unit or something like that.
Tom also provided coverage for Leann’s zone when she called in sick. Unfortunately for Tom, Leann called in two or three times a week and sometimes more. That made for one angry Indian. Where Peggy was level headed and calm, Tom and Leann were more like brother and sister continually fighting. A big problem for people like Peggy and Norma was that for some reason, Milwaukee County didn’t have an attendance policy. No one seemed to know why exactly. I guess the county administrators had just assumed that people would show up for work. Maybe they did at one time who knows.
People like Leann would take off of work frequently, and people like Peggy and Norma couldn’t do very much about it. There was another guy named Jose who showed up at the building one day. Jose was a caseworker at one time, according to Peggy. Jose had left work one day about two years earlier, and no one had heard from him until suddenly, he showed up. The department administrators had taken Jose off the payroll and assumed he had quit. But Jose showed up and wanted his old job back. Jose was a minority and had a
lawyer so they couldn’t just throw him out. According to Peggy, Jose was re-hired and even got a settlement from Milwaukee County because of the lack of attendance policy.
I’m sure Vera would have found this episode very entertaining. After he was hired back and got his settlement, Jose left again and never came back. I don’t think a scam like that could work more than once, could it?
Poor Tom, when Leann stayed home, Tom had to do her work and then his as well. I’m not exaggerating one bit about how much she took off of work. Out of any given month, Leann would take off at least ten days and often more. Every time she called in, Tom would complain to Peggy, and Peggy’s office was right next to mine. When she did come in, she looked more like a client than a caseworker. I don’t mean that as a slight against the clients. It’s just that Leann always looked like she had slept in her car the night before.
She had that worn out downtrodden look about her. She would come in with matted down hair and no make-up and wrinkled clothes. Leann looked like a client applying for benefits, not take applications for benefits. At least the client’s appearance would improve over time as their situation stabilized. Leann looked the same all the time.
Leann was very loud and spent any free time she had talking with her friends, who would pile into her cubicle. Leann and her friends were so loud that I would have trouble hearing my clients. It didn’t do any good to complain. I discovered over time that she had quite a violent temper, so I learned to keep my distance. My first encounter with Leann
happened after Peggy gave me a file for a 17-year-old girl who had applied for aid.
Leann had a moral objection to a 17-year-old girl having a case. Unfortunately, Leann’s articulation skills were like that of a belligerent drunk at closing time. Oddly, Leann didn’t have any moral hang-up over taking off of work so much and burdening her coworkers or stiffing the taxpayers. She did want me to know that she didn’t like the idea of a 17-year-old girl collecting benefits. She voiced her opinion to me in a shrill scream that would have made Rachel from the hospital cower. Leann yelled so loud that Peggy heard her from her office and came to my rescue. Peggy finally had to transfer the file to another unit to placate Leann.
Another Peggy occupied the other cubicle adjacent to mine. This Peggy was more like Mary at Child Support Enforcement at the courthouse. She seemed to spend most of the time trying to sign on to her computer and the rest of the time asking me how to use it.
How she got a job as a caseworker was anyone’s guess. Luckily, she got promoted and moved to the Schlitz brewery complex. At least this way, she wasn’t bothering me anymore.
There wasn’t a lot of interaction with the other caseworkers in the unit. The same animosities that I encountered when I first worked on 12th and Vliet years earlier were alive and well. Some of it was personal, and some were just people getting their
frustrations out, I think. The blacks didn’t like the whites, and the Puerto Ricans and Mexicans didn’t get along, etc. There were endless racial animosities practiced by many of the staff. There was never any overt hostility, just a lot of subtle and not so subtle signals.
Peggy was easy to get along with, and I think she was just glad to have a caseworker like me in her unit who showed up every day. She was Mexican and spoke fluent Spanish, which probably helped me from getting mugged when we went out for lunch. Of course, I was the only white guy in the unit. The balance of the unit was black and Mexican and Puerto Rican and a couple of white women along with Sara from the training class.
However, Sara got promoted after a few months and left the unit. She got promoted again about a year later. No one seemed to know why, since she hadn’t worked there long enough to know how to do anything. That pesky nepotism and cronyism just kept popping up. It seemed at times like half the department was related to or friends with or neighbors of the other half. Everything minorities and women had complained about decades earlier and even sued over was still happening except now they were doing it.
A peculiar thing I noticed was that a lot of the clients were scared of their workers. The caseworker I replaced was a black woman who transferred to another unit. When I started in the zone, I had constant phone calls from clients. Many of them had their benefits cut off or reduced by my predecessor. I don’t think it was race-related. I think she was just
mean. As an example, this worker and her friends and relatives held a fundraiser every year for charity. They raised money by selling dinners to people in the office. I signed up and received a meal of ribs and other side dishes. The container I received came sealed in plastic, and when I opened it, I noticed immediately that one of the ribs was already chewed on by someone. Whoever chewed it then placed the rib in the container and sealed it with tape and then wrote my name on the package. All of the dinners that this woman brought had employee names written on them, so I know it was no mistake. I think she was resentful because she wasn’t very good at her job as a caseworker. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was white either. But this was how she raised money for charity every year.
A lot of the workers had the same attitude towards their clients, I noticed. They would claim to have nothing but compassion for people and then exhibit outright cruelty and meanness. One favorite trick that nearly all the workers liked to play was to leave their clients in the waiting room. Clients would show up needy and hungry and beg to see their workers. Many workers would let the client sit in the waiting room for the entire day before talking to them. Then instead of dealing with their client, the worker would just tell the client they would have to come back on another day. I got used to seeing workers do this to clients, but it was painful to watch. The idea was that if the clients got jerked around enough, they would just leave and never come back.
I just didn’t have a hang-up with seeing people that came into the office for some reason.
If someone showed up, I would see them. Whatever the client usually wanted only took a few keystrokes and a few minutes of my time anyways. But for some reason, many of the workers seemed to develop what I can only describe as a “god” complex. I know it sounds too dramatic, but there is just no other way to explain it. To see a grown-up person, break down in tears and beg their worker for help only to get turned away was a common sight in the waiting room. The first time I saw that happen, it got to me. A client had sat in the waiting room for hours waiting to see her worker. I just happened to see the worker come out and talk to her client. It was the end of the day, the client was begging to speak to the worker about her case, but the worker refused, and the client started sobbing uncontrollably and was nearly hysterical. Both the client and the worker were black women of the same age. If I did something like that, I don’t think I could have slept at night and might even have gotten fired.
That there were clients that sat in the waiting room hungry for nearly the entire day without seeing their caseworker was a regular occurrence. One worker whose name was Larry would leave his clients in the waiting room while he sat in his cubicle reading a book. The reason I remember his name was that the receptionists and even some workers were amazed at his indifference. A couple of times, I just had to see for myself and walked past Larry’s cubicle, and yes, he was reading a book. I overheard Larry complain at one point that one of his clients even called him at home because they were so desperate.
Larry wasn’t bothered by the client’s situation, only that they were bothering him at home. When Larry retired years later, he was interviewed by the local media as he walked away with his pension bonus check at the courthouse. The reporter asked Larry what he did for Milwaukee County. Larry replied that he was a caseworker and spent his career “helping” people get food stamps and other benefits. Larry really said, “helping,”
according to the report. Larry was also one of the regulars in Leann’s cubicle, when she showed up that is.
I can’t talk about the waiting room without mentioning Shirley. Shirley was the photo I.D.
clerk for the section. Shirley had retired from the Army, according to Peggy, and then came to work for Milwaukee County. The first ten years on the job, Shirley wore her Army issue combat boots because she didn’t want them to go to waste. The reason I mention her is due to one particular habit that she had. Whenever there was a luncheon in the department, Shirley would eat in the break room on our floor. Shirley worked on the first floor but would take the elevator to our floor and walk across the waiting room with a plate full of food. She never covered the plate. Shirley was huge and would fill up her plate till it was overflowing. She would then walk across the same waiting room where workers like Larry would leave their clients to languish with their stomachs growling. As the elevator door opened, the clients would stop and stare at Shirley as she strolled across the floor with her plate of food. Her callousness was stunning. I had never seen anything like it before or since.
One thing I learned to dread was what we called coverage. Coverage meant that a worker had left for some reason, and one or more of their clients needed help. I did that on occasion for workers in the unit. One time I did coverage for a Puerto Rican worker who had refused to add a white woman’s kid to her case, and he wouldn’t tell her why either, and one day when he was out “sick,” the client called into Peggy, who transferred the client to me. Another time was for a black worker who wouldn’t reopen a white couple’s case. They had taken the bus from the north side to the south side to come into the office.
Luckily for the client, Peggy assigned both cases to me. I restored benefits to both cases, much to the chagrin of the two caseworkers. The clients made racist accusations against the workers. One said the black worker was trying to take out 400 years of oppression on him and his wife.
Both of the workers complained to Peggy, our supervisor. They knew I had done nothing wrong, but I had usurped their rule in their little fiefdoms, I guess, and they didn’t like it.
Sometimes workers just wanted to punish their clients for some transgression that the client had committed or thought they had committed. Whether the client had done anything wrong was irrelevant. I just wasn’t into the head games that people played. There aren’t enough words to describe the behavior of the workers I encountered there. Believe me when I say that many of them could have easily fit into any gulag or concentration camp administration staff without any difficulty whatsoever.
Most of my clients were young women desperate to get their cases reopened or restored.
Many of the workers couldn’t have cared less. I used the manuals and followed the regulations to do my work. That was good for the clients as the rules usually worked in their favor. I just didn’t have the same problems that the other workers did. Many workers and supervisors granted or denied benefits based on their opinion of the client rather than the rules. Even Leann would deny benefits if she were in a bad mood.
With up to ten caseworkers and thousands of cases to watch over, supervisors like Peggy could only do so much. As I went through my caseload, I discovered case after case where everything was wrong. My predecessor, along with so many other caseworkers, tended to rule their zones rather than administer mandated benefits. They acted more like nobility ruling over serfs. We were all just public servants, but so many workers seemed to think that the public were their servants, especially their clients. The clients weren’t so elegant in their description. Clients often complained about how many
‘hoops’ their workers would make them jump through to get benefits that they were entitled to anyways.
As I began to engage with my clients, I realized that many were overdue benefits. My predecessor just wasn’t in the mood, I guess, ever. I came across one case after another, that was overdue money and food stamps. I issued so many supplemental checks and food stamp allotments that Norma, the section supervisor, grew suspicious. Norma was always sending her secretary to my zone to retrieve case records so she could review my work.
She thought I was up to something. So, I guess doing my job correctly made people suspicious.
It wasn’t uncommon, though, for some workers to solicit “favors” from their clients.
Some workers wanted sex, and others just wanted money. Sometimes the client went along and other times not. One worker caught his client working and not reporting it and told her to give him sex in exchange for not telling. The client went to the sheriff. The deputies were waiting in the client’s bedroom closet when the worker arrived, expecting his “treat.” The deputies even waited for the worker to take off his clothes before they came out of the closet. Another favorite story concerned a worker from my unit, Karen.
Years later, Karen transferred to another department, where she managed Social Security payments for patients with mental health problems. It turned out she was a closet crack head and would steal her client’s money and buy drugs, even during her lunch hour.
I only sent money and food stamps when the clients were eligible. The payments were nominal and so low that I was surprised when I realized other workers and supervisors were watching. Some of the workers seemed amazed and even annoyed at how productive I was. My productivity so seemingly perturbed some people that they would steal my computer printouts.
You see, each month, all of the caseworkers received something called “monthly reports”
that our clients sent us. The “monthly reports” were sent to the clients by the main office in Madison. We entered the information from the reports, which would update the client’s
case. After input, the computer system generated a printout, and then the printout and the report were stapled together and filed. All of the caseworkers had similar numbers of reports to input. However, many of the workers, for lack of a technical term, just sucked at this.
Many of the workers were terrible at many of their work-related tasks, but if the
“monthly reports” weren’t inputted, the case would close automatically. Many cases did close every single month, and then the clients would have to wait for the worker to reopen their case. Larry, no surprise, was one of them. Another was Cary, who was so bad at keeping her caseload up to date she had to take the “monthly reports” home with her along with other work nearly every day. Cary told me on one occasion that she had worked as the minister of transportation when she lived in Puerto Rico. I never tried to verify that story, but for some reason, I just believed it.
Supervisors throughout the building could only cringe every month as the “monthly reports” would pile up, and the clients would pack the waiting room and the telephone lines. Benefits didn’t get paid until the “monthly reports” were processed. It got so hectic at times that even Larry would have to put down his book. Whenever I inputted the
“monthly reports” for my zone into the computer, I had to rush to the printer. If I didn’t, someone would steal my printouts, and then I would have to do the work all over again. I know it wasn’t a mistake since the printouts were several inches thick and had my name and zone number printed on them. I could never figure out why it took the other workers so long to complete this task every month. I only spent a few hours processing my
“monthly reports,” but other workers would spend up to two weeks every month working on the same reports. It just didn’t make any sense, but the whole department had problems like that. In addition to missing printouts, I also had to contend with other not so subtle hints that I wasn’t welcome.
One thing that happened not long after I started was someone had placed a paper tack on my chair. I had left my desk momentarily and returned to find the paper tack on the chair. Someone had hoped I would sit on it, I’m sure. Another time I left my cubicle and returned to find the phone ringing. When I tried to pick up the phone, I discovered someone had taped the phone to the base, and no one was on the line either. I don’t know what the purpose of that was, but that plus the paper tack made me cautious from that point on. It seemed that someone was trying to booby trap my work station. It may sound amusing, but I had an artificial hip then as now. Sitting on a paper tack and getting poked would have made me jump and maybe lose my balance and possibly end up in a wheelchair.
There was too much racial animosity ever to figure out who the culprit was. I guess Vera’s omen was still following me around and never far behind. As if things couldn’t get any worse, smoking got banned in the smoking room. I now had to go out in the hallway to smoke. Much to the disdain of the administrators, someone figured out that Milwaukee County only rented the office space in the ‘Hills’ building and not the hallways. That made for constant forays into the hallway to smoke every day. However,
this also meant that I had to listen to the minority caseworkers complain about their lives and how white people had ruined them.
As Alice at the mental health complex used to remind me on occasion, we white folks all looked the same. I never knew what to say since people talked of things that had nothing to do with me. Things like how they got picked on in school because they were Mexican or black etc. Or perhaps how they had gotten short-changed on some long ago transaction.
One curious topic that came up one day concerned an episode I had forgotten. A black woman caseworker named Vanessa, who didn’t even smoke, made it a point to come into the hallway to discuss with another black caseworker a long ago event. They were laughing about how they had harassed the white guy from the photo id booth years earlier on 12th and Vliet, the county supervisor’s son. They even brought up how a client was allowed by the staff (like them) to wait for the white guy in the parking lot near the employee entrance/exit just so the client could hassle him on his way out. I could only surmise that Vanessa thought that since they weren’t technically on county property while in the hallway, they could say anything they wanted. I was never quite sure how to respond to these comments, so I would just smoke and leave and always check my cubicle for booby traps before I sat down. I made it a point to tell Vanessa how staff and clients had confused me with the county supervisor's son. She went quiet after that. Last I heard Vanessa had been promoted to department director. That made the news because it was also discovered she was hiring her relatives to work in the office with her.
Despite the drama, we were supposed to input all of the client data onto the new computer system. For many months, the state of Wisconsin maintained the old and new system at the same time. No one knew where the old computer system came from, but the new one came from a private company. It was quite an elaborate system, kind of like the one at the Medical Complex. Just like at the Medical Complex, it was more wishful thinking than reality to hope the employees would figure out how to use it.
Everyone got a user manual. At least we were told it was a user manual, but eventually, I discovered something quite comical, I thought. As it turned out, what the staff was provided with by the training department was a “sales” manual. This manual was a couple of inches thick, but it only contained general information. It didn’t explain how to use the computer system, except in general terms. It wasn’t an instructional book so much as an advertisement.
Using an extensive mainframe computer system requires a certain amount of skill and technical instruction. It’s not like an excel software package that you can figure out over time. To make things work properly, we needed to know guidelines and specific codes and where to enter them. I’m sure that seems all very logical, but the training staff wouldn’t give us the actual operations manual for the computer system. They gave us the sales manual/brochure and hoped it would suffice until they figured out how to use the computer system themselves. Yes, I mean the training staff didn’t know how to use the new computer system either, so they kept the operations manuals for themselves. It took the training staff about a year before they felt comfortable enough to give instructions.
But even then, it was just the beginning of the instruction flow. It took the training department several years before they went through all of the material and passed it along to the rest of the staff. When the system first went online, all of the employees attended training sessions and received basic instructions on how to enter our cases onto the new computer system. That was about it, though. We had to then wait as I said for another year or so before we started getting any real instructions. I can remember specific instances where I had clients that were either getting too much or not enough benefits, and I couldn’t do anything about it. All I could do was hope that no one complained too much and hoped that the training department would send the instructions over so I could fix the cases. Many other caseworkers were in the same predicament.
As with the county hospital system, the new welfare computer system started going haywire almost immediately but with more humorous results. Probably the worst screw up that no one knew how to deal with was the issuance of multiple benefits and notices.
When I say multiple, I mean multiple. For some reason, due I guess to a programming screw up, love those government programmers, every time a worker updated a food stamp case, the client would get food stamps. I mean every single time! If a client moved, for instance, and I entered the new address and pressed enter to update the case, which was required, the client got another batch of food stamps. We heard stories of clients getting dozens of food stamp allotments every month. A typical food stamp allotment at the time was in the fifty to a hundred-dollar range for a single client. Instead, a client might receive several thousand dollars in food stamps every month. Yes, I said several thousand or more, I suppose, depending on how many times a case was updated. That was for a single
client. Many of the clients had kids, lots, and lots of kids. No one could tell us why precisely the computer system was doing this; it just kept happening. Also, the computer system would send out notices. Clients would receive dozens of notifications every month for no apparent reason. The announcements, though, were mostly a nuisance because it was just paper you could throw away or recycle. The food stamp problem was enormous by comparison.
Caseworkers like myself could only do so much damage control. Once I entered a case into the new computer system, I would typically only work on that case again when it came up for review. If I had to update the case before the review was due, the client got extra food stamps. A much bigger concern was the programmers in Madison. They, like the programmers at the Medical College, did things in “batches.” That meant when the programmers in Madison had to update cases; they did many at once.
That meant a lot of clients hit the food stamp lottery every time the mailman showed up.
At the time, food stamps were issued and mailed in booklets, so once they were in the mail, they were hard to stop and nearly impossible to trace. There was one instance when a worker at a mail station in Milwaukee called the office on 12th and Vliet. He wanted to know if it was ok to mail 40 food stamp allotments to one person at one address. The staff told him to return the extra allotments. In that one instance, at least, the overpayment was stopped, but that was the rare exception. Most of the allotments went through to the clients.
Knowing what was happening didn’t mean anyone knew why it was happening or how to fix it. Caseworkers like me were at the mercy of the programmers in Madison and the training department on 12th and Vliet. The problem with food stamps allotments went on up until I transferred out of the unit a couple of years later. I heard that it went on for several years more after I left. All anyone could do was hope it got fixed. To my knowledge, no one ever did an audit to determine how many overpayments went out or the amount. Caseworkers couldn’t just look at a computer screen and find overpayments.
Each physical case would have to get examined.
Another problem was that the overpayments went out through the new computer system.
That meant we had to recoup the payments using the new computer system as well. That wasn’t possible for a long time because the training staff was still trying to figure out how the system worked.
It wouldn’t have made any sense to ask a client to pay back food stamps issued in error because it was happening every month. It would have looked stupid to send out food stamp overpayments nonstop followed by collection notices. If the clients had to pay back the overpayments, they could have filed appeals. If all of the clients that received overpayments because of this food stamp programming error appealed, it would have overwhelmed the whole system. Also, at some point, the state administrators would have had to explain why their new computer system didn’t work very well. That might have attracted unwanted attention from all the wrong people. People like legal action groups who work as client advocates or especially people like food stamp administrators in
Washington, D.C. They might have sent investigators with subpoenas followed by pesky reporters and those annoying indictments. Even without those problems, the dollar amount of overpayment was too much to ever recover from clients who were low income. At the very least, it could have turned into a P.R. disaster. No, this problem with food stamps was best left alone and forgotten and definitely not worth the embarrassment or especially time in the big house.
Amid this turmoil, “diversity training” was scheduled. I don’t know which bonehead came up with that idea as there were only a half dozen or so white guys left in the department. There was no diversity, what was the point of diversity training.
As I mentioned earlier, many of my cases were due money because of my apathetic predecessor. On the other hand, at least an equal number of clients were committing welfare fraud. As cases came up for review, I discovered one client after another who was working and not reporting it. Because I was able to check state payroll and other records, I usually knew if someone was committing fraud before they even came in for their review.
The clients in my zone at times seemed genuinely perplexed at the prospect of answering questions about employment. There was a whole range of replies that I received when I would ask a client if they were working. It was difficult for me to keep a straight face at times. Many clients didn’t want to give a definite “yes” or “no,” so they would do things like nod their heads and say “no” when I asked if they were working. They might also
shake and nod their head “yes” and “no” at the same time like a bobblehead. I guess you just had to see it. I would then inform the client that they were required to give a verbal response. At that point, clients would get creative. Besides saying “no” while they nodded their head “yes” or say “yes” while they shook their head “no.” Others might mumble or try to talk with their mouth closed.
I would mail the clients a review booklet, and they would fill it out and give it to me when they came in. There were many clever tricks used with the review booklets at well.
Many would circle “yes” and “no” for the question, “are you working” or draw a half-circle around both the “yes” and “no.” At that point, I would stop and have the client circle “yes” definitely or “no” definitely and initial the entry. I think my favorite trick was when clients would quit their job the day before they came into see me. This way, they could honestly say no when I would ask if they were working. The day after the review, the client would go and get another job. I knew they did this because I could check payroll records at will for any of my clients.
Inevitably, I would make a fraud referral to the fraud squad on 12th and Vliet. Yes, the same one I worked with before. I should point out that while in training, we got special instructions on processing review booklets properly. If not completed correctly, they were useless to the agency. The review booklets were supposed to get filled out, signed, and dated by the client and countersigned and dated by the caseworker. An essential thing to do in all cases was to make sure the review booklets were notarized in the presence of the
client after signing. That made the review booklet a legally binding document. I noticed immediately that my predecessor neglected to do these things in virtually every case.
The only way people could get prosecuted for fraud was if they completed the review booklets correctly. Unsigned, missing, or incomplete application and review booklets were beneficial for the clients who had received too many food stamps, as mentioned earlier. Signing the booklets meant the clients agreed to follow the program rules. The program rules covered things like reporting income and agreeing to pay back food stamp overpayments. Without adequately completed application and review booklets, many of the fraud referrals that I sent out would eventually end up in the garbage.
There was one fraud case in particular that I came across one day while doing coverage for another worker in the unit. The worker was out sick of course on a day she had scheduled reviews. I brought the client into my cubicle and started the review. I soon discovered that she had worked for Wisconsin State Fair Park full time for the previous five years and had not reported it. That made her ineligible for benefits, of course, so I closed her case and completed a fraud referral. The client complained to Peggy about that.
She said I was mean to her for closing her welfare case. Peggy also told me that other caseworkers knew this client well and were afraid of her. Other caseworkers had known she was working but too scared of the client to do anything about it! Usually, the clients were fearful of the caseworkers, but not this one it seemed.
Peggy also mentioned that this client knew many people in the department that might help her out if needed. I soon discovered what she meant when I sent for the client’s case record from the inactive records department on 12th and Vliet. This client had a welfare case open for over ten years, but there weren’t any completed review booklets in the file.
Most of the paperwork was missing or not complete. That meant that she couldn’t get prosecuted for fraud. I have no idea who would have taken out all of the relevant paperwork. The case records were shipped between zones by the clerical staff. The clerical staff was mostly minority and female like the caseworker staff and enjoyed antagonizing me just as much.
But all in all, it was just another day in the hood, I guess. I didn’t want to transfer out of the building since there wasn’t anywhere to go anyways. The odds of getting promoted were next to none. Most of the supervisors were women and minority, as were the caseworkers.
There was one place, however, that the caseworkers talked about, it was called the west annex, and it was an old building located on the county grounds. Only caseworkers with the most seniority were allowed to transfer there. That was the unit where caseworkers processed and maintained Medicaid cases for clients who were patients in nursing homes.
One day a notice was posted with transfer openings, and there was one caseworker position open at the west annex building. I applied for it and waited. Much to my surprise, I got the job. I had more seniority than the other caseworkers that applied.
I guess it was kind of a fluke that I got the job at the west annex. I discovered that other people with more seniority were interested in transferring there but hadn’t applied.
Luckily for me or so I thought at the time, those people didn’t know they had enough seniority, so they just didn’t ask. The unit at the west annex building was much less stressful, or so they said. Wow, was I in for a ride, but I just didn’t know it yet. I said my goodbyes and left. I’m sure the real celebration happened after I was gone, but I didn’t care. I was getting farther away from the ghetto and 12th and Vliet and Vera’s omen, so I was feeling good. I also hoped I wouldn’t have to check for tainted food or a booby-trapped cubicle anymore.
Swindle: to take property or money by fraud or deceit.
I watched a crime program some years ago on television. A detective claimed there was no such thing as the perfect crime because there was always evidence of the crime left behind. The evidence he claimed would eventually help catch the person that committed the crime. Does it matter if evidence of a crime is left behind if no one cares to examine it? What if someone commits a crime out in the open and many people know it, but no one cares to do anything about it. What if the person or people or law firm that helped orchestrate perhaps the biggest Medicaid scam in Wisconsin history got away with it?
What if they got rich in the process and made sure to pay off the right people so no one would interfere. I don’t think a perfect crime means no evidence is left behind. A perfect crime only means that someone committed a crime and got away with it. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Do you think something sinister is going to happen now? Foreshadow: to indicate beforehand. Do you think I’m good at foreshadowing?
As with the other positions I had taken over the years, this one started uneventfully enough. Of course, I was the only white guy in my unit. I was getting used to that.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was at the beginning of my last assignment with Milwaukee County. My new position was not a bad place to work, I thought. I was now part of the Medicaid nursing home unit. We were the envy of the whole Human Services department. I now had my own office with a real door. The west annex building or scene of the crime if you prefer was west of the old Medical Complex hence the name. The building was part of a depression-era work project, some said.
There were many such old buildings around the area at the time. Many are gone now.
Victims of progress, as some might say. The west annex had a basement and three upper floors. The nursing home unit was on the first floor. The basement was empty, and the floor above us in use by paramedics doing some kind of administrative work. The nursing home unit I was in was one of two units on the floor, and Pat was the supervisor.
There were usually eight workers in each unit. All of us were required to process applications and reviews, so there was no need for an intake or specialist worker.
As the days went by, I kept getting phone calls for a caseworker named Randy. When I looked up cases on the computer, I kept seeing his name as the caseworker assigned to my zone. Pat wouldn’t say much about that, but I discovered that Randy was a caseworker from a special unit that only did coverage for empty zones. Pat wanted Randy to take my zone, so she assigned all of the zone cases to him. Randy was a white guy like me, so I know it wasn’t racial. Pat just didn’t want me there for some reason. Was there something going on at the west annex that she and others didn’t want anyone to know? What she had done was a work rule violation, and she had to undo it and get rid of Randy. Randy had to transfer to another unit. Even though it was apparent I wasn’t wanted there, I wasn’t going to give up my own office, so I decided to tough it out. I could stay put or keep looking for paper tacks on my chair on 9th and Mitchell or look at the booger mural on the bathroom wall on 12th and Vliet.
Randy was well-liked by the whole staff I discovered. Visitors to the office also thought highly of him, and I soon found out why. On my desk was a stack of carbon copies leftover from a form used to backdate Medicaid coverage. Randy had completed hundreds of these forms and left the carbon copies on the desk where I now sat. Randy had backdated hundreds of nursing home Medicaid cases without authorization. That’s called Medicaid fraud. I asked Pat, but she claimed to know nothing of it and stated she had explicitly told Randy not to do that, I bet. In any other situation, Randy might have gotten fired and went to prison, but at the west annex, he got a gold star.
Things were different here. Our actual clients were nursing home patients, so we never met them. The people we dealt with were friends or relatives or representatives of clients/patients. Each nursing home had one or more employees who were responsible for keeping their patient’s nursing home Medicaid cases open. It was essential to keep the cases open because that’s how the nursing homes got paid by the state of Wisconsin. By backdating Medicaid cases as Randy did, the nursing homes got even more money. I heard that the staff at the nursing homes that Randy helped out were so grateful that they sent letters of appreciation to the department administrators. They even suggested that Randy get promoted to supervisor.
The other caseworkers in my unit were minorities or women, of course. Two of the scarier ones were Addie and Genevieve. Genevieve and Addie were very civil with our supervisor Pat but no one else. They were more like junkyard dogs, and people tended to
keep their distance. Genevieve was considered an assistant to Pat, the supervisor, but no one knew why. Genevieve would blow up at people for no reason at all. She would lose her temper to the point where she looked like she was ready to take a swing at the nearest person. Genevieve would conduct applications and reviews like the rest of us, but start screaming at people for no reason at all. She wasn’t interested in arguing, just yelling. If people shouted back, Genevieve would get spooked and jump up and run into Pat’s office. Then Pat would have to finish up with the people.
Addie, on the other hand, was calmer. I could converse with her up to a point, but Addie’s demeanor would change suddenly for no reason. She might act pleasant one moment and act like she was ready to kill the next. Addie had physically attacked another older worker who had since retired. Addie’s attitude with office visitors was so bad that one of the county board supervisors and even a catholic priest had complained about her.
The other unit consisted entirely of women and minority caseworkers, of course, except for their supervisor. Their supervisor deserves a special introduction. He was, Frank, the angry gay man. Frank was mad most of the time, and I don’t know why. Frank was an older white guy and a Korean War veteran. Unlike Alan, the Vietnam War combat payroll clerk from the Medical Complex, Frank was actually in a war zone and didn’t have to borrow other soldier’s stories. Frank was crazy and mean. Not like Addie and Genevieve, but Frank was always ready to fight. Even the sheriff deputies were afraid of him. Frank
had worked at the office on 9th and Mitchell that I had just left. He wasn’t my supervisor there, so I had little to do with him, but people loved Frank. Frank was Larry’s supervisor as well, remember Larry? Larry adored Frank, but Frank was “married.” It was complicated. Think Carlos but without the paralegals.
Frank was a unit supervisor on 9th and Mitchell, but one day he argued with Norma, the section supervisor. I forget the reason for the argument, but Peggy told me that Norma called Eva, the assistant director, afterward. The situation was so severe that Eva had to leave the Potawatomi casino and come back to work. Eva then transferred Frank to the west annex to get rid of him. If there ever was such a thing as a fateful decision, that was it. By the time Frank retired some years later, the state of Wisconsin and ultimately the taxpayers had gotten scammed out of at least a quarter billion dollars, and that’s a conservative estimate. Frank wasn’t a mastermind or anything, but as a supervisor, he knew how to make things work.
The west annex was where caseworkers went to die. Frank was as they say put out to pasture, and now he wanted payback, I think. I should probably digress a bit and explain how affirmative action affected hiring and general standing within the bureaucracy. If you have ever heard someone talk about “playing the race card,” it might make it easier to understand. Affirmative action is kind of like a card game. Card games are point-based.
The better the hand, the more points you have, which gives you the win.
White males get zero points, of course, because they’re evil white males. White females get one point because they’re female. Non-black minority males get one point because they’re a minority. Non-black minority females get two points because they’re female and minority. Black males get two points because they’re black, and they got their seniority backdated. Black females get three points because they’re black and female and also got their seniority backdated. The seniority backdating was equivalent to one point because it gave such an advantage.
The early civil rights and affirmative action lawsuits had everything to do with blacks, so blacks got the biggest prize. Women and other minority groups joined in eventually but didn’t get the same reward for whatever reason. People that are disabled or veterans or those that are bilingual might get extra credit but no extra points. This policy had something to do with Frank getting transferred. Frank had competed with Norma for Norma’s job of section supervisor on 9th and Mitchell but lost. There are no points for gayness, so Frank was just another evil white guy in the point system. Norma was a non-black minority female, two points, and Eva, the assistant director, was a black female, three points, so Frank with zero points didn’t stand a chance. I never did find out why blacks got their seniority backdated. I heard three different white women, including Vera, complain about that policy over the years. They wouldn’t say how they knew about it but were so mad because they thought it had hurt their promotional chances. Supposedly that was how Pat got promoted to supervisor.
Now to continue, Frank had already worked at the west annex for some time before I showed up. I spent my first month reading my Medicaid manual and processing reviews.
Then the fun part started. Pat gave me an application to process one day, and so began my introduction to the weird and wacky ways of the west annex. We generally did applications in the morning and reviews in the afternoon. Some of the applications that I took were rather mundane and others, not.
My office was right next door to Frank’s office. I began to realize that Frank had a peculiar way of doing things. Frank could make a proverbial drunken sailor blush with his language and woe to the caseworker that crossed Frank. One day I had taken an application from a woman representing one of her relatives. While processing the case, I discovered that the client was over the asset limit. If someone had too much money and I inputted the amount, the computer system would deny the application automatically and send a corresponding notice to that effect. That was the way the system was designed to work, but then came Frank.
The woman that I took the application from called Frank. Frank stormed into my office and grabbed the woman’s application from me, and said a few choice things and left. The next day I looked the same case up on the computer system and voila; the case was open.
As I went through the case on the computer, I realized that Frank had deleted the asset amounts on the case. Committing Medicaid fraud was extremely easy with the new computer system. It was the same computer system as the one on 9th and Mitchell that
was sending out the extra food stamp allotments. Frank had computer access to every nursing home Medicaid case in the building. All Frank had to do was go into the asset screen on the computer file and go to the field containing the dollar amount. If someone was $100,000.00 over the asset limit, for instance, Frank might change the amount to $100.00 or even zero. By doing this, the computer system automatically opened the case and granted Medicaid benefits. To top it off, Frank left the case under my name to make it look like I had done the dirty work.
Unknown to me at the time, this woman was a “fof” or friend of Franks. I quickly learned that there were many “fof” coming and going. Frank was like the godfather of the nursing home Medicaid office at the west annex. It may sound amusing until you realize how much money he scammed. Frank was always “holding court” in his office.
He was receiving visitors to his office or taking phone calls nonstop. Frank was in his office in the morning when I arrived and was still there when I left at the end of the day.
If someone had a problem getting a nursing home Medicaid case open, Frank could fix it. As long as they were a “fof,” anything was possible.
I should expand a bit on the concept of representation as it related to nursing home cases.
The law is funny about taking away a person’s ability to represent and make decisions for themselves. Even prisoners in jail can represent themselves and make decisions for themselves. It’s no different for nursing home patients. I don’t mean to compare the two; I’m just trying to make a point. The only way that I know of that a person can lose that
ability to represent and make decisions for themselves is through something called a guardianship, which is established by courts and are done only as a last resort. I only had a handful of guardianships in my caseload. Guardianships are expensive and time-consuming. Most people in nursing homes don’t have guardianship established.
Regardless of someone’s condition, they are still assumed to have the ability to make their own decisions. In place of guardianships, many people designate someone to have “power of attorney” to make decisions for them. A “power of attorney” or “poa” does not take away someone’s ability to make decisions for themselves. It only designates someone to do something on their behalf. A person can grant or cancel a “poa” at any time. Even if someone is unconscious, in theory, at least that person can get better and revoke a “poa.”
When a person designates another as “poa,” that person or grantor is still responsible for the actions of the “poa” or grantee. If you give someone “poa” and they put you in a nursing home and take your house and take all your money out of the bank, you are still considered responsible for what they did. Maybe you could take that person to court and try to get your stuff and money back, but good luck. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
You have to keep in mind that it’s not an automatic criminal offense to trick someone into signing something. You need proof and or eyewitnesses, and if the only eye witness is a comatose nursing home patient, then you don’t have a crime at all, do you? It remains a civil matter with a whole different set of rules, and that’s assuming it ever gets to court. Where guardianships are a formal court matter, “poa” is used informally and
was usually drawn up by lawyers representing people who were applying for Medicaid on behalf of nursing home patients.
Envision a situation where a person living at home goes to the hospital and then gets sent to a nursing home. The patient is not well and is probably receiving medications and is not entirely coherent. Then, say a relative or friend or neighbor shows up and tells the patient they will help them. How nice. The person might say sign this ‘poa’ paperwork, and I can help you manage your finances and affairs. How nice. Then that person, now armed with a “poa,” goes to the county nursing home office and applies for Medicaid for that patient. How nice. But unfortunately, the nursing home patient has maybe several hundred thousand dollars in the bank and not eligible for Medicaid. Uh o, but fortunately, that person with the ‘poa’ is a “fof” and goes to see Frank or just calls him on the phone.
After talking with Frank, Frank retrieves the case record from that pesky worker (like me, for instance) and proceeds to make a few “corrections.” Wouldn’t you know it, the case is now open, and Medicaid benefits are approved.
But you might ask what of the piles of money the patient has in the bank. Well, not to worry, sparky, the “poa” can now run down to the bank and make a massive withdrawal.
What about the house the patient owns, you might say? Well, the patient did sign the
“poa.” Hey, why not put the house on the market and sell it. The home sale proceeds are payable to the homeowner who is still in the nursing home but not to fret. Just use that
“poa” and cash the check and keep the money. No sense telling that pesky worker (like
me) about any of this, after all the “poa” is a “fof.” What of the patient who maybe had hoped to go home at some point, you might ask. Well, no, the patient needs too much assistance according to the “poa” and is probably better off to stay in the nursing home.
It’s for the “best.” And then the “poa” lived happily ever after. How nice.
Variations of this situation played out over and over through the years. Different people all doing nearly the same thing. People and their lawyers would get so mad at me when I wouldn’t open a Medicaid case. Men would look at me like they were ready to kill.
Women would yell at me like I was their ex-husband. Luckily for them, Frank’s office was right next door, and he could fix it. By following the procedure, as mentioned earlier, there were no legal implications. By signing the “poa,” the grantor had given the grantee the ability to clean them out, and they often did. Who or how could you prosecute someone in this situation. The patient signed the “poa” paperwork. The “poa”
grantee did what they were authorized to do. All the lawyers did was witness the signatures and affix their notary public stamp to the paperwork. I, as a lowly caseworker, could only watch.
There was one other form of representation used, the “authorized representative.” This
“a/r” was a way to gouge people and the system with even less guilt. The “a/r” forms went out with the applications, which made Medicaid fraud even more effortless. The patient signed the “a/r” form. That allowed whoever was designated to submit the Medicaid application on the patient’s behalf. I’m not sure how exactly, but many “a/r”
were able to gain access to bank accounts and such, much the same way that a “poa”
might.
As mentioned earlier, approximately 16 caseworkers were in the building. I discovered that like the caseworkers on 9th and Mitchell, many were doing their “own thing.” Some followed the regulations, and some not so much and some not at all. Mostly they didn’t. I don’t know why. Most of the caseworkers were old and set in their ways and not about to change. That still didn’t explain why they did what they did, however. Many of the caseworkers were like Frank. They would open cases and approve Medicaid coverage for no particular reason that I could tell. I’m pretty sure Frank’s motivation was revenge for getting transferred, but the other caseworkers were a different story.
The only thing I can think of was the “god complex” that I ran into so often on 9th and Mitchell. But here at the west annex, the motivation was just the opposite. Caseworkers on 9th and Mitchell would deny benefits or close cases and leave their clients crying in the waiting room. At the west annex, caseworkers were always happy to accommodate
“special” requests and open “difficult” cases. Many of the caseworkers were committing Medicaid fraud as Frank was. I can’t say for sure how much fraud. With Frank, I was able to catch him committing fraud only on occasion. I’m sure there were other cases of mine that he “fixed” that I didn’t know.
The reason I know other workers were committing fraud is because of a quite comical rule that we had. I’m sure whoever came up with the rule had good intentions but had never met Frank or Pat or any of the caseworkers at the west annex. Although we were all tasked with processing applications, we were not allowed to keep the case once we had finished processing the application. Would you like to know why we did that? Are you ready? It was to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Do you like that? Its’ a little funny, isn’t it?
After completing the applications, we would give them to the supervisors who would check for “errors” and make “corrections” as needed. Then the supervisors would give the cases to the clerical staff. The clerical staff would then transfer the cases to the appropriate caseworker. Where Frank was breaking the rules as fast as he could, Pat never seemed to know the rules at all. I realized almost immediately that it was pointless to ask her any questions about anything work-related. She was the supervisor, but I think her hiring had more to do with the affirmative action game I mentioned earlier. From an objective standpoint, the system there at the west annex didn’t work long before I arrived. Having a more knowledgeable supervisor probably would not have made much difference.
What I have described so far only covers individual efforts. What I have described so far was mostly illegal. Probably even a little bit immoral, don’t you think? Do you think that was the worst of it? Do you believe what Randy and the other caseworkers did was the
worst thing? Do you believe what Frank did was even worse? Remember, I asked if you think I’m good at foreshadowing? Are you ready for the worst part, or did you think I already told you? Should I start now or do you want to take a baby aspirin first? Ok, I’ll start now.
So far, I have only discussed the efforts of the staff and visitors who were unrepresented by lawyers. But their actions were mere child’s play compared to what the Medicaid lawyers had in store for us every day. So far, I have tried to emphasize the lax oversight in the nursing home unit. Of course, I had no idea how bad it was until I started. However, there were people like attorney Bruce who did study the loopholes in the whole Medicaid eligibility process. Attorney Bruce found a loophole in the system that you could drive a locomotive through. By the time I started, the gravy train was off and running. More and more people were jumping on every day. And what kind of school could produce a graduate like attorney Bruce capable of orchestrating the biggest Medicaid fraud in Wisconsin history, you might ask? Well, Marquette University, of course.
What attorney Bruce came up with was quite ingenious, I suppose. I must give credit where credit is due. Instead of just cleaning out someone's bank account and stealing all of their money, attorney Bruce had another idea. He came up with a plan to streamline the whole process to make Medicaid fraud more mainstream and entirely guilt-free besides. Attorney Bruce came up with the idea that would satisfy even the most
discriminating palate, I suppose you could say. He made it so easy to scam people out of every dollar and dime they ever had.
He called his creation the “personal annuity.” This little gem would help attorney Bruce, and countless other lawyers commit what was most likely the biggest Medicaid scam in Wisconsin history and get rich in the process. Do you need another baby aspirin yet? The
“personal annuity” or “p/a” was designed to make Medicaid fraud a breeze. If you think back to the “poa” example, I discussed earlier, what if a bank or nursing home employee grew suspicious. It could cause a problem if someone asked too many questions. Those indictments are so annoying. Attorney Bruce came up with the “p/a” to assuage any issues that might come up. The concept of an annuity is to give a company your money and usually receive a monthly check. There are all types of annuities to fit most any need. Of course, often, only companies that have a proven asset base and a solid track record are allowed to sell annuities. Of course, that didn’t stop attorney Bruce. What he came up with was quite simple. For example, say a person had to go into a nursing home, and that person’s spouse didn’t feel like paying the bill for the nursing home. Tough you might say, get out your checkbook, right? Not if the spouse went to attorney Bruce.
Let’s expand the example and say that couple had four adult children. Attorney Bruce would look over the couple’s assets and figure out they were, for instance, $400,000.00
over the asset limit. Well, you might say, wouldn’t that couple have to pay the nursing home in cash until they used up their excess assets. No sparky, they wouldn’t, not with
attorney Bruce on the case at least. To further the example, attorney Bruce might tell the spouse to transfer $100,000.00 to each adult child. In return, each adult child would agree to pay back say $10.00 a month for 20 years with a lump sum payment due the last month to pay off the remaining balance.
Stretching out the payments over such a long period virtually guaranteed that the patient was dead by the time the annuity expired. That was the idea. The annuity would automatically cancel upon death, and no more payments were required. By creating the annuity, the couple was now under the nursing home Medicaid asset limit. The spouse could go into the west annex and apply for nursing home Medicaid with a clear conscience. All the spouse had to do was show the ‘p/a’ paperwork to the caseworker, and all was well.
But you might say this sounds ridiculous. Don’t people need a license to sell annuities, you might ask? Well, probably sparky, but that didn’t stop attorney Bruce. Then what about the tax implications with the I.R.S. and Wisconsin revenue you might say, who cares. Well, you might add, the whole concept sounds stupid. No one in their right mind would give away a total of $400,000.00 in exchange for a total payment of only $40.00 a month. Well, sparky, you’re on to something there. There is something called an “arm’s length transaction” clause that applies to contract law. That’s supposed to apply in a case like this. Well, why didn’t it then you might rightly say? Didn’t the supervisors try to stop this so-called ‘personal annuity’ scam? Well, no sparky, they didn’t, not really.
Remember, there were only two supervisors, and one didn’t care, and the other one probably couldn’t spell personal or annuity anyways.
Attorney Bruce wasn’t the only lawyer doing this. Other lawyers were coming into the office five days a week. There were so many schemes and scams coming through the office every day; it was hard to keep track of them all. Every lawyer had a different angle to work. The only consistent theme was that none of the lawyers liked me. Quite a few complained about me nonstop from the time I started in the nursing home unit to the time I left. Of course, almost all of the lawyers were ‘fof,’ so if I did something they didn’t like, they could and often did go next door to Frank’s office. Remember, whatever it was, angry Frank could fix it. So many lawyers were trying to get me fired, I lost count. After working in the other county departments, ornery lawyers and nutty coworkers just didn’t get to me so much. At least none of them were putting paper tacks on my chair.
Not long after I started, a methadone clinic opened in the basement of the west annex.
Now things were getting interesting. Do you know what methadone is? It was rather entertaining to watch the drug addicts mingle with the lawyers wearing their thousand-dollar suits as they accompanied their blueblood clients into the west annex. I guess on an individual level, all of them needed their fix for the day. The addict’s drug of choice was methadone. The lawyers and their client’s drug of choice was the money, of course.
Nobody could ever get enough of either it seemed. Each morning as I pulled into the west annex to park, I was greeted by a lot full of junker addict cars squeezed next to the
lawyer’s luxury cars. The addicts would stream into the basement for their fix. The lawyers and their clients streamed upstairs to the first floor for their fix.
The west annex building had seen its better days come and go. It was now a roach hotel.
The only thing that kept the roaches at bay was the exterminators that came in at night to spray. We would often find the dead roaches, many several inches in length, throughout the building. The lawyers and their clients, along with the other various applicants, didn’t seem to mind and would pack the waiting room each day. After registering the applications, the clerical workers would hand them over to the caseworkers like me. Then I got to fetch the lawyers and their clients from the waiting room and bring them into my office.
As mentioned earlier, Frank and I just didn’t get along too well. That whole Medicaid fraud thing was just a big turn off to me. Frank seemed to pick up on that vibe and wanted me to suffer as much as possible as a result. He accomplished this by sitting with the clerical workers each morning while they registered the cases. Frank then made sure that I received the most difficult cases, along with the most irritating lawyers. The clerical workers adored Frank and would do anything for him. One, Joyce, made it a point to tell every applicant that I was a ‘brand new worker’ as if to imply that I didn’t know anything. Maybe I knew too much.
Denise, another of the clerical workers, knew that Frank was committing fraud and would wait to transfer cases that Frank had worked on because Denise and Frank didn’t realize that the entries Frank was making were recorded permanently on the computer system. The entries made in various cases contained the I.D. of the person that made the entry. It would disappear after a certain number of days. After that data erasure, Denise would then transfer the case, thinking Frank was in the clear. But unknown to her and Frank, the entries weren’t erased, the computer system archived them. The archived data was still available for retrieval; they just didn’t know it.
I don’t know why, but Frank always went to great lengths to get back at me for whatever perceived slight he seemed to have thought I committed. Maybe he hoped I would quit, but I didn’t. I guess his ploy kind of backfired on him. It was because of angry Frank’s attitude that I found out about many of the fraud schemes going on there. Attorney Bruce, along with his partner attorney Dave, were regular visitors to my office. Whenever I saw either one, I knew a big fraud case was coming my way. The lawyers, in general, didn’t get involved in cases involving small dollar amounts. A standard fee charged by the lawyers was $5000.00 to prepare a ‘p/a’ contract. Generally, only people with large amounts of money went to see these lawyers. Otherwise, it wasn’t worth it for either party. As I mentioned, many lawyers were committing the same scam. Why not? It worked. I heard from several people that some of the Medicaid lawyers were even holding seminars. People with lots of money would show up to find out how to scam the Medicaid system, and they always got what they wanted.
A typical day at the west annex might bring in a dozen or more Medicaid lawyers along with their clients. The amount of money that was moving around was quite staggering.
The highest net worth that I encountered was about $500,000.00, and it involved a woman who came in with her lawyer to apply for Medicaid for her husband, who was in a nursing home. Her lawyer had advised her to transfer the excess money to her adult kids, which she did. The lawyer then drew up a ‘p/a’ for each kid with the standard language, as mentioned earlier. The couple wasn’t eligible for Medicaid, but the ‘p/a’
made it possible.
I knew nothing of these ‘p/a’ until they showed up in my office. The first time I saw a
‘p/a,’ I showed it to Pat because I knew it didn’t make any sense. Pat assured me, though, that we were required to accept the ‘p/a’ as valid contracts. She claimed that she had denied a ‘p/a’ case about two years earlier, but a Wisconsin fair hearing examiner ruled against her. Pat showed me a copy of a fair hearing decision. Pat claimed that the decision was the reason for accepting the ‘p/a’ contracts. Pat wouldn’t give me a copy of the decision and wouldn’t say why so I had to take her word for it. She was the supervisor.
I should expand a bit about fair hearing examiners. They generally came from Madison every day to hold hearings on 12th and Vliet. The fair hearing examiners were also known as administrative law judges. They were also lawyers. They didn’t like driving to Milwaukee and certainly didn’t like working on 12th and Vliet. But who did? They didn’t
seem to like anything having to do with ‘the state of Milwaukee’ as it’s also known in Madison. Above all, the fair hearing examiners didn’t like caseworkers.
Fair hearing examiners would listen to complaints from clients and or representatives nearly every day. Because of the specialized nature of our work, we generally were assigned to or stuck with the same fair hearing examiners. The opinions that the fair hearing examiner would issue were usually contrary to the caseworker's opinion. If it was sunny outside and the fair hearing examiner was sitting next to an open window, and I told him it was daylight, he would say it was dark out so that he wouldn’t have to agree with me.
I’m not sure why this particular fair hearing examiner decided to allow the ‘p/a,’ but he did. The fair hearing examiners had the role of judge and were supposed to make decisions based on regulations. There was no basis for allowing the ‘p/a,’ but he did.
Because of that one decision, the state of Wisconsin lost out on probably hundreds of millions of dollars. How is that you say? The arithmetic gets a little complicated, but I suppose that was the point. Evidence of this wrongdoing was all around, but nobody cared. I hope I have explained how the personal annuity contract worked. How it impacted the state budget might make you get out your calculator and more baby aspirin. I have tried to remain conservative in my estimates, so here goes.
When someone applied for Medicaid for a nursing home patient, we would look at the three prior years of their life. If that patient had transferred money or assets during that time, the caseworker would have to figure out if a penalty was warranted. Assume a couple had a net worth of about $500,000.00 and transferred over $400,000.00 to their adult kids. Their asset limit was approximately $82,000.00, so that meant the couple was more than $400,000.00 over the asset limit and should have gotten penalized. The penalty period ran up to three years because the caseworkers could only ‘look back’ as we called it three years. The average nursing home cost at the time was about $3000.00
per month. What we were supposed to do was take that $400,000.00 amount and divide by $3000.00. That result is over one hundred, and we only could look back three years or thirty-six months, so the penalty, in that case, should have run for thirty-six months.
The logic may seem goofy, but married couples don’t have to drain their bank accounts to pay for nursing home care. That’s where that thirty-six month ‘look back’ period and penalty came from, and the policy was quite generous. Some people like attorney Bruce didn’t think so and came up with the ‘p/a.’ The idea and concept of transferring money was perfectly legal if done correctly. People didn’t have to go broke paying for nursing home care, so the regulations allowed all types of exemptions. There is a near endless list of exempt assets like houses, cars, and burial policies and such so I won’t go into that as it’s kind of irrelevant. The basic idea was that people had to pay for up to thirty-six months of nursing home care before they were eligible for Medicaid. Some people did this, and others went to see attorney Bruce or one of the other Medicaid lawyers.
On the other hand, there were cases where wealthy people would go into nursing homes and their relatives would take all their money and pay for nursing home care for thirty-six months and then apply for Medicaid the thirty-seventh month. That was legal since we could only ‘look back’ thirty-six months. There were cases where people would go into nursing homes and pay for thirty-six months and transfer small amounts of money, and this was also legal. Of course, there were even cases where people would pay many hundreds of thousands of dollars for nursing home care and go broke. I encountered all of this and many other situations.
Now getting back to the example, the couple had transferred over $400,000.00 to their adult kids. That meant they were not eligible for thirty-six months. But there was no penalty thanks to people like attorney Bruce and the ‘p/a’ contract. That meant the state of Wisconsin paid out for nursing home care for thirty-six months, and it shouldn’t have.
Remember, the average cost of nursing home care at the time was about $3000.00 per month, which is how much the state of Wisconsin paid the nursing home. $3000.00 for thirty-six months comes out to, ready, $108,000.00. The state of Wisconsin paid out approximately $108,000.00 because of each personal annuity contract.
Well, that’s not much you might say considering that the Wisconsin Medicaid budget runs into the billions of dollars over many years, right? Not much? The waiting room at the west annex was packed with lawyers five days a week. This scam went on for about four years, I’ll explain later. If one personal annuity contract was submitted with a
Medicaid application every business day for four years and the state of Wisconsin paid out $108,000.00 for every case, how much is that? Drum roll, how does $108,000,000.00
sound. That’s just assuming one case per day with 250 business days in the year. I estimate that is the minimum amount scammed. If all 16 caseworkers took an application with a ‘p/a’ every day for four years, it would total $1,728,000,000.00, that’s billion with a “b” kids. There was generally more than one case per day submitted with a ‘p/a.’ I’m sure there were days when all sixteen caseworkers in the building processed cases that had a ‘p/a.’ Some days the caseworkers had to process two applications.
Just to keep the numbers conservative, with an average of say, four ‘p/a’ submitted each day for four years, the amount comes out to $432,000,000.00, yes 432 million dollars.
Quite a brilliant scam, don’t you agree? This amount doesn’t even include angry Frank’s fixes. That also doesn’t include fixes made by the other caseworkers like Randy. It was a perfect crime. The perfect crime you never heard of, and this scam worked in such a way as to keep everyone clear of the actual Medicaid money stream. None of the people I’ve mentioned ever received any money directly from Medicaid. Not that I know of anyways.
When I worked on 9th and Mitchell, I had to issue supplemental food stamps and money allotments to my clients on occasion. After I entered the case number and amount and pressed enter, the data went to Peggy, the supervisor. She could approve, question, or even deny my request. If approved, the payments would show up on reports generated by the computer system. The unit and section supervisors could monitor payments this way.
That is called quality control. It doesn’t always stop fraud, but it’s better than nothing.
There were no such reports or monitoring of benefits with nursing home Medicaid. The only quality control we had at the west annex was the integrity of the caseworkers like Randy and the supervisors, angry Frank and Pat, not to mention the Medicaid lawyers.
Medicaid is similar to an insurance company. When Medicaid pays institutions like nursing homes, they typically combine all of the patients on one report, which is called a remittance. Usually, only one check for all of the patients, and the check is computer generated along with the signature. By getting someone certified for Medicaid, the case was then commingled with the legitimate claims so no one could tell which was which.
Other schemes and scams were coming and going over the years I worked there, so I can only project these figures up to a point. I have kept my calculations conservative by only making estimates on what I can prove or legitimately estimate. The fraud squad detective’s I worked with on 12th, and Vliet liked to use the ‘kiss’ principle, as in ‘keep it simple stupid’ or, in other words, stick with what you can prove. Do you like that?
On the other hand, just for salacious speculation, I often wished I could have sent some of the nursing home cases to the fraud squad. Some people came in representing patients in nursing homes who were probably not eligible at all. I had people come into my office with lawyers who, as far as I could tell, had no relationship with the nursing home patient at all. I mean, it looked like they had befriended the patient while the patient was still living in their home and then ripped them off. Some of the people that showed up
appeared to me as ‘confidence men’ or women who had tricked the patient into signing over everything they had. They took the patient's confidence and then their money and then dumped them into a nursing home.
The lawyers wouldn’t let me question their clients ever, so it was impossible to tell who these people were at times. One lawyer, attorney Bruce’s partner Dave actually, liked to make faces at me while I processed applications. He would even jump around in his chair or get up and look over my shoulder just to try to disrupt my concentration. Attorney Dave wanted to get me fired at one point because I sent a request to a bank for information on his client. I was allowed to do things like that. Still, attorney Dave sent a letter to the Milwaukee County corporation counsel’s office claiming I had violated his client’s constitutional right against illegal search and seizure. Attorney Dave liked to send me correspondence in the form of a lawsuit letterhead as in him vs. me. That didn’t scare me much as the corporation counsel lawyers were more like pretend lawyers than real ones—kind of like the child support enforcement lawyers at the courthouse.
I contacted the corporation counsel office on occasion to see if they would look into the many scams going on in the office. The corporation counsel office would reply that they were just too busy. The Milwaukee County corporation counsel was the legal counsel for Milwaukee County employees, or so I was told. What could have possibly made them so busy? I worked in the nursing home unit for approximately four years and never once was the corporation counsel not busy. When I found out how much some of the
corporation counsel lawyers had gotten from the pension scam several years later, I understood why. Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to get involved either. The gravy train was rolling baby.
The biggest problem with the ‘p/a’ was that as time went by, more and more people found out about them. More and more lawyers were packing the waiting room every day.
The lawyers were charging $5000.00 for each ‘p/a’ contract scam they brought in to the office. Using the previous example, if four ‘p/a’ were submitted each day at a rate of $5000.00 for each lawyer for four years that comes out to, ready, $20,000,000.00 in fees.
Yes, sparky, 20 million dollars. That was a scam worth protecting, don’t you think.
Everyone did their part; it seemed except me. I just didn’t play well on this with others, I guess, what I can say. Eventually, even accountants and financial planners were creating
‘p/a’ contracts.
The amounts of money were just incredible. The most massive money transfer I knew of involved another caseworker. She told me about it as we stood outside the west annex building on a smoke break. A lawyer and her client were just leaving the building with smiles all-around, of course. The caseworker, Sue, said that lawyer’s client had come into town to manage her uncle’s affairs. Her uncle, who was single and in a nursing home, had over $1,000,000.00 in cash, and his niece had simply taken all of his money and had a lawyer create a ‘p/a’ contract to make it legal. The niece then was headed for the airport
to go back to where ever it was she came. Easy money if you can get it, hey? Keep in mind that in a case like that where the patient was single, the asset limit was only $2000.00. Single people were allowed many of the exemptions that married people were, but the asset limit for single people was still only $2000.00. In this case, this uncle in the nursing home would have probably never qualified for Medicaid. If he wanted his niece to have all of his money, he would have given it to her beforehand, wouldn’t you think?
The extra money paid out by the Wisconsin Medicaid office was increasing exponentially, but there was no end. The biggest hang-up with these scams that I had was that only certain people knew about them. Most of those people were lawyers or knew lawyers who knew how to work the system. The biggest problem I had was that the general public didn’t know about ‘p/a.’ There were even some lawyers who didn’t know or didn’t want to get involved with ‘p/a.’ You have to understand that when you work for a government agency, you are spending someone else’s money. After people pay taxes to the federal or state government, that money belongs to the federal or state government. Agencies like Milwaukee County Human Services are supposed to service federal and state programs.
County agencies are only acting on behalf of or acting as administrators of programs created and funded by the federal and state governments. When people like Frank, the angry gay man or attorney Bruce or his partner attorney Dave came up with their own rules, it’s called intentional program violations or in laymen terms, Medicaid fraud. You’re just not supposed to do that. But they did.
I should mention that the ‘p/a’ scam wasn’t the only thing going on at the time. There were other types of fraud going on that had nothing to do with ‘p/a.’ The worker I just mentioned, Sue, was popular with lawyers because she never asked any questions. She would take applications and process them without asking for any financial information at all. The lawyers and their clients liked Sue so much they would often send her gift baskets afterward.
Other workers were simply overwhelmed when trying to decipher financial information.
I took an application from a man who was a nephew of a nursing home patient. During the interview, the nephew provided me with stock certificates that his uncle, the nursing home patient, owned. The stock only had a par value of several hundred dollars. Par value is nearly meaningless when determining stock value, but the nephew wanted me to think that was all the stock was worth. I checked and discovered the stock had a market value of about $25,000.00. I denied the application due to that fact and informed the nephew. I also recorded this information in the case record so other caseworkers would see it if the nephew ever came back. The nephew waited over a month and did come back and reapplied. If someone waited that long to reapply as he did, then the case was given to a different caseworker. The nephew probably knew this and was just playing the system. The next worker, Maxine, who got the case didn’t know the difference between par and market value and asked our supervisor Pat. I tried, in vain, to explain but neither Pat or Maxine knew enough about the stock market to understand the difference between par and market value, so they opened the case. I didn’t know what to say. Between
Maxine and Pat, they had over 50 years on the job. Cases like that came and went every day. There wasn’t a lot of brainpower at the west annex I’m afraid and what little there was usually was put to no good end.
Another caseworker came into our unit who only processed food stamps and medical assistance cases. She was there only temporarily, but I got to do coverage for one of her cases one day. Do you remember coverage? This worker had scheduled reviews and then took off of work. Sound familiar? That was a favorite trick amongst caseworkers. While processing the review, I noticed that the caseworker was giving the wrong amount of credit for shelter costs. The client in question owned a house and paid about $2000.00 a year in property taxes. Instead of dividing $2000.00 by 12 as in 12 months, the caseworker entered $2000.00 as the monthly amount paid for taxes. That made it appear as if the client was spending $24000.00 a year in property taxes instead of $2000.00. That made the computer system generate food stamps based on the wrong amount.
The client was supposed to get about $50.00 per month but instead got over $400.00 in food stamps per month. I corrected the error, but the client complained, and even Pat asked me why I did that. I tried to explain the finer points of food stamp eligibility to our supervisor, along with computer logic, but it was pointless. The caseworker put the $2000.00 amount back in the client’s case so the client could keep getting over $400.00 in food stamps each month—another example of fraud, just another day at the office, what
else can I say. Eventually, the caseworker transferred along with her cases to another unit.
Later I heard she had gotten promoted to a supervisory position.
Believe it or not but one of the caseworkers from the west annex got arrested. I could never get all of the details, but from what I was able to find out, he had solicited money from people to help them get Medicaid for their relatives. He didn’t want money to open cases; he just offered to help people understand how the system worked after hours. His name was Ray, and he was forming some type of Medicaid eligibility consulting business on the side. I think it was a sting operation because I kept getting phone calls from people asking me how much I would ‘need’ to get a particular case opened. That went on for a while. I suspect that Ray got caught up in that. I don’t think he was the target. I’m pretty sure that I was. Poor guy, he was a black guy too, so I was shocked when I saw the Milwaukee County sheriff detectives take him away.
Ray’s arrest never made any sense. I mean between angry Frank and Pat and the caseworkers and the Medicaid lawyers, millions of dollars were getting scammed every week. What was so special about Ray when Sue was getting gift baskets? Other caseworkers were committing their little scams as well. Why didn’t anyone else get to ride downtown in the sheriff’s car? Ray was the only other straight guy beside me in the department. That meant I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so now it was just me and Frank the angry gay man and 18 ornery women. I was so glad to have my own office with a door to close.
If the sheriff’s detectives were so bored, why didn’t they check into the other scam going on right in the back of the west annex building in full view of everyone? There was a small warehouse building behind the west annex. Trucks with Milwaukee County markings would back up to the door, and workers in Milwaukee County uniforms would unload the trucks into the building. Some of the stuff looked like junk, and some of it looked like brand-new office equipment and furniture. You might want to take another baby aspirin now before I go on any further. So, some days, the county trucks would pull up, and the county workers would unload all the stuff from the trucks into the building. No big deal right sparky? Well, here it comes.
On other days, people in civilian clothes and driving private vehicles, usually trucks would load up the stuff from the warehouse building and drive away with it. Where they went, I have no idea. It was a coordinated effort, and I’m sure of that because the county trucks and the private vehicles never showed up on the same day. They would always alternate, so they didn’t run into each other. It was a lot easier to steal stuff this way, I suppose. I should point out that county buildings were always secure. I doubt if the people taking things were anything but county employees. Where the stuff went to is anyone’s guess. I imagine the furniture made for an excellent addition to many basement rec rooms and up north cabins all over Wisconsin.
While the warehouse building was getting cleaned out, there was a sheriff deputy on patrol every day, giving us parking tickets. He showed up one day and had trouble getting through the parking lot. All of those lawyers and bluebloods and drug addicts had the west annex parking lot packed every morning. The deputy decided to start writing parking tickets for no particular reason. He would show up in the mornings and write down license plate numbers and come back a couple of hours later to write tickets.
By the time he would come back, the addicts and lawyers were usually gone, so he wrote tickets to the county workers instead. After I had gotten about a dozen tickets from this guy, I found my disabled parking permit and displayed it on the dashboard of my car. The deputy was furious when he realized I had a disabled parking permit. He parked his cruiser behind my car and sat there for about a half-hour, at least. He looked like he was ready to open fire. He was so mad; his whole head turned beet red. I could see his scalp through his white hair.
The county grounds had lots of unused parking lots at the time. Many of the county buildings that the parking lots were for were long gone. All of the parking lots had plenty of ‘no parking’ signs or ‘2-hour limit’ signs, but they were for traffic control of traffic that didn’t exist anymore. The deputy didn’t care. He just kept writing tickets as fast as his boney little arthritic fingers could write. The sheriff’s deputies, even at that time, were making $50,000.00+ a year in wages and benefits. This job the deputy had writing tickets made as much sense as Vera’s job. Milwaukee County probably lost money on every ticket he wrote. He finally started to go overboard, though. He wrote Addie a ticket, but he lied about the time he wrote the ticket. Addie had proof of this because she was
shopping at the time, of course, and had her time/date stamped receipt with her when she went to court.
The deputy finally crossed the line one day and wrote one of angry Frank’s caseworkers a ticket. The caseworker showed it to angry Frank, and he called the deputies supervisor and chewed him out. I mean that too, remember my office was next to angry Frank’s and I could hear him yell. The sheriff’s supervisor drove to the west annex with the deputy and met angry Frank in the parking lot, and angry Frank shoved the ticket in their faces and told them to shove it more or less. They never got out of their car; they knew better.
They took the ticket back and drove away. Frank, the angry gay man, had his moments.
Eventually, Pat called the county grounds maintenance department and had them remove the ‘no parking’ and time limit signs. They did this project on a Saturday when the deputy was gone. The following Monday, the deputy returned to work with his trusty clipboard. He stopped and put his cruiser in park and picked up the clipboard, and suddenly realized all of the parking signs were gone. All he could do was put the clipboard back down and drive away, and he never came back. Awwwwwwww.
All the millions in Medicaid fraud and all the theft going on in the back of the building and nobody cared, well as long as nobody parked too long while they were doing it, I guess. One day I heard several shrieks from some of the other caseworkers. I went outside, and one of them pointed out a crow that had killed another bird and took it to the top of a utility pole to eat. Such a ghastly sight at the time but now somewhat
symbolic, I suppose, the carcass, like the taxpayer, getting picked clean right out in the open.
A Milwaukee County court commissioner came to see me one day. Finally, an honest lawyer, right? He was there to apply for his mother. She was a patient at a nursing home and needed Medicaid. While we discussed his mother’s Medicaid application, the court commissioner proceeded to boast about how he and his brother, a dentist, had conspired to commit insurance and tax fraud. Yes, he did, and he didn’t seem to care who knew it either. He seemed rather proud of himself. His brother, who had an office in Wauwatosa on about 122nd and North Avenue as I recall, employed their mother as a janitor. She didn’t work there, though, but this way, he could deduct wages and benefits paid on his tax return plus give his mother free health insurance. I suppose it sounds almost noble to help ones’ mother in such a fashion but not if you consider how much money dentists and court commissioners make.
To top it off, the court commissioner told me another story about property transfers. It seemed he had attended a cocktail party in Madison, where the topic of Medicaid eligibility came up. It turned out there was a secret fair hearing ruling that only those in the know knew. His mother had supposedly transferred her house in Washington heights to his brother, the dentist. The problem was that they didn’t record the property transfer at the courthouse. That meant that the court commissioner’s mother was not eligible for Medicaid since his mother was not returning home from the nursing home, which made her house an available asset.
That meant she was supposed to sell her house to pay for nursing home care since she was never going back home anyways. That was the rule that we caseworkers used in our eligibility tests. Now according to this court commissioner, there was a secret ruling or as secret as one could make it concerning property transfers. The ruling stated that property transfers need not get registered at the courthouse. That was a pretty big deal. Other caseworkers and I had denied similar cases over the years because that was the rule. I know this is getting a bit complicated, but that’s the point. The more complicated it is, the easier it is to get away with it.
The three years look back rule I previously mentioned should have applied in this case.
The court commissioner claimed that the house was transferred by his mother to his brother, the dentist, more than three years earlier; however, his mother wrote the transfer on a piece of scrap paper, and she didn’t record the transfer at the courthouse. Other people over the years had tried this scam but generally didn’t get away with it. Suddenly there was a ruling that made such property transfers legal for Medicaid purposes.
I told the court commissioner before he left that I would have to call the office of fair hearings in Madison to verify this. These were the people who dealt with these issues. I had called this office periodically over the years trying to get information, but I was almost always unsuccessful. Usually, I couldn’t get past the telephone operator.
This time when I called and mentioned the Milwaukee County court commissioners'
name, she put me through to the number two man in the whole department within seconds. Almost as if he was waiting for my call. Yes, of course, he said, such transfers are allowed, but I said what about all of the other people that do the same thing yet are denied and sometimes financially ruined as a result. Well, he assured me, everyone is eligible for this, but I said, how would they know that if you don’t say anything. Well, not to worry. A Medicaid bulletin update was soon issued to inform everyone concerned that such transfers were now suddenly ok. What about all the smucks that lost out because of this previously secret ruling? Too bad.
The nursing home unit was kind of like a financial death camp, I suppose. It never mattered what people did. It was all in who they knew that made the difference. There were many days when I would see the Medicaid lawyers coming and going with their clients and their annuity paperwork. I would see other people in the waiting room with or without lawyers or the ‘p/a’ paperwork, sitting unaware that they were about to get their applications denied. Those people were the ones that would end up paying a fortune for nursing home care. It was all in the flick of the wrist.
Some people had their lawyers, who made up the ‘p/a’ and didn’t pay anything for nursing home care, and others would just about go broke paying for nursing home care. While in the waiting room, sometimes people with the ‘p/a’ would end up sitting right next to the people without the ‘p/a.’ To paraphrase an old country-western song, some got the gold mine, and some got the shaft. If someone didn’t have the right lawyer or didn’t suck up to
Frank, the angry gay man, figuratively of course, not literally, then their lives were often turned upside down or even ruined as a result. You’re not supposed to treat people differently or worse when administering mandated, taxpayer-funded benefits. It’s not about the golden rule. It was more like a civil rights violation. Pretty harsh, hey, but nobody cared.
Then one day came some redemption in the form of a Medicaid bulletin. The formal title was bureau of welfare initiatives operations memo, number 99-19, file 2730, and 2731
with an issue date of 3/17/99, non-w-2, priority: urgent. Wow as angry Frank might say, that’s a mouthful. There were so many of these bulletins, but this one was quite special.
It was the announcement regarding personal annuities. The very same ones that attorney Bruce had invented to scam the Medicaid system. The bulletin states explicitly that the personal annuities were not allowed for Medicaid purposes and never were. The announcement even details how lawyers tried and failed to get the personal annuity contracts approved in other counties. Remember, the only reason, according to Pat, that the ‘p/a’ were ever allowed in Milwaukee County was because of that one fair hearing examiner mentioned earlier.
The bulletin is quite detailed and filled up with legal jargon that’s hard to follow, but it basically says we know what you’re doing, so knock it off. The author of the bulletin seemed quite perplexed that county departments had allowed the personal annuity.
Strangely there was no mention of the ‘p/a’ in Milwaukee County. The cover-up was starting already. I was overjoyed when I read through the bulletin. Attorney Bruce and
his cohorts with their ‘p/a’ had created a two-tier benefit system. I suppose that angry Frank and the other employees at the west annex had helped create a multi-tiered system as well but on a smaller scale.
The fact that people were getting a break on nursing home cost didn’t bother me at all since nursing homes are costly. The problem was that only certain people got the break and others didn’t. If people didn’t know lawyers like attorney Bruce or attorney Dave or the other lawyers, they paid in full. Only those people willing and able to pay $5000.00
got the break. If they were a friend of Frank’s, that was even better. There were many times that I approved applications that were a quarter or half-million dollars over the asset limit. They were accepted because they had a lawyer and the ‘p/a.’ The very next day, I might deny a similar application from someone else who didn’t have a lawyer or
‘p/a.’ I, as a caseworker, wasn’t allowed to give financial advice, so all I could do was watch.
It was all based on money. The more money and connections people had, the better they were treated. If not for my artificial hip, I might have jumped up and down on my desk after I read the bulletin. I had to settle for closing a recently opened case with a personal annuity. The computer system sent out a notice to the client who took it to their lawyer, who filed for a fair hearing with the same fair hearing examiner that had approved the
‘p/a.’ It was just me against the lawyer, her Paralegal assistant, and a stenographer along with the client.
In this particular case, the patient was in a nursing home. The patient's spouse had transferred about $200,000.00 using the ‘p/a’ contract. The case was assigned to me after it opened. The fair hearing went on forever; it seemed. The Medicaid lawyer kept trying to trip me up on legalities and obscure regulations. I took the straightforward approach and sat there with my Medicaid bulletin copy and kept repeating what was in the bulletin.
Finally, the fair hearing examiner started asking me questions about what I thought of the whole situation. The question didn’t make any sense as caseworkers, and even fair hearing examiners were supposed to make decisions based on rules and not emotions. The fair hearing examiner was advocating for the other side and seemed perplexed that he couldn’t change my position. Every time he asked for my opinion, I told him he should get arrested and go to prison for Medicaid fraud. The fair hearing examiner never flinched when I said that. He just kept looking at his tape recorder that he used to tape fair hearings. It appeared to me that he was looking at the tape counter on the recorder. I think what he was doing was keeping track of when I said he should go to prison so he could go back later and erase my statements from the tape.
The biggest question I had that I never got an answer to was why did this fair hearing examiner approve the personal annuities. Was he trying to get revenge for some slight or insult like angry Frank? Was he trying to vent some hostility? Was he the creator of the booger mural in the basement bathroom on 12th and Vliet, where we had the fair hearing? He had easy access, and the fair hearing room was very close to the escalator
on the third floor. The escalator would have taken him directly to the basement. The bathroom was only a few feet to the left from the escalator. I guess I’ll never know.
After the hearing, I went back to work at the west annex and waited. I don’t recall how long it took for the fair hearing examiner to make his decision, but it finally arrived, and I had won. I just know it pained the fair hearing examiner to no end to rule in my favor, but he had no choice. If he had ruled against me, I could have complained to his superiors in Madison. With that one fair hearing decision, I had run the gravy train right off the track, and the lawyers weren’t about to take it lying down either.
Not long after this fair hearing decision, I got sued by the very same lawyer who had lost against me. That was a little bit unnerving, but the court dismissed the suit without me having to do anything. Finally, the era of the personal annuity was over. Based on Pat’s statements to me, the personal annuity scam had gone on for a total of about four years.
Times had changed and not for the better for all. I’m sure my name came up in many a meeting regarding personal annuities. That was a pretty screwed up situation. The Medicaid bulletin clearly stated that the personal annuities were never allowed. I thought it odd that the bulletin didn’t mention Milwaukee County even though Milwaukee County was the only county I knew of where the personal annuities were ever accepted. Maybe the author of that Medicaid bulletin didn’t want anyone to know how many personal annuity scams had already gone through the system. I suppose if the wrong people in Washington D.C. would have found out about the personal annuities, forget about indictments.
Milwaukee County Human Services might have lost its certification to accept and maintain nursing home Medicaid cases.
Angry Frank didn’t care, but why did Pat go along with the scheme. I used to see attorney Bruce’s partner attorney Dave in Pat’s office from time to time. I don’t know what they discussed. Did attorney Dave offer Pat some kind of payoff? One day when I was walking into my office, I noticed attorney Dave standing in angry Frank’s office. I didn’t hear much, but I did hear attorney Dave say they were ‘putting money aside’ and ‘under the table.’ I didn’t know what he meant by that at the time, but I would find out later. The recent ‘p/a’ decision only concerned personal annuities. It did nothing to stop angry Frank from continuing to make his fixes. Angry Frank was holding court just as before without skipping a beat.
One day I discovered a Medicaid case that angry Frank had backdated way too far, and there was no paperwork to support the backdating. I complained to Pat, who didn’t care but told me to call E.D.S. in Madison to find out how it was possible to backdate cases without a paper trail. E.D.S. was an acronym for Electronic Data Services. E.D.S. was started by a man who became a billionaire off of government contracts. Why doesn’t that surprise me? E.D.S. had the contract for maintaining the Medicaid database. I called and talked to an operator at E.D.S. to ask how it was possible to backdate a Medicaid case without documentation. The operator said it wasn’t possible and promised to call me back with an answer. When this operator called me again several days later, she seemed somewhat bewildered. She said she had no idea how it happened, but it did, and that was
her answer. To make it worse, she said that whoever made the entry to backdate this particular case used a generic E.D.S. computer I.D. that was impossible to trace since more than one person had access to that I.D.
That was a somewhat unnerving development. It meant that angry Frank now had a co-conspirator at E.D.S. in Madison. All angry Frank had to do was pick up the phone and call E.D.S. in Madison to commit Medicaid fraud. This way, angry Frank’s name and or computer I.D. didn’t show up anywhere. People like angry Frank and the lawyers were no dummies. I don’t know where they came up with these schemes and scams, but they did, and they just kept coming. I’ll never know how much the personal annuity scam cost or how many cases angry Frank ‘fixed’ over the years, but you have to admire that evil genius at work. It’s rather impressive and even breathtaking I suppose in its own right.
Even if someone had stepped in at the time to hold angry Frank and the lawyers accountable, what could they prove? All the lawyers were doing was preparing legal documents and witnessing signatures. That’s what lawyers do. That’s not illegal. The Medicaid lawyers generally didn’t sign the Medicaid applications, their clients did. The clients were only acting on behalf of the nursing home patients who had granted them
‘power of attorney.’ As mentioned earlier, none of these people received money directly from Medicaid. The only people responsible were the nursing home patients who, in many instances, were barely conscious. What could anyone do, roll a nursing home patient into court with an oxygen tank and I.V. drip dangling off the side of their bed?
What about angry Frank. He didn’t document the Medicaid fraud he committed. He tried to cover it up at every turn. Even if he got arrested and went to court, he could always claim it was a misunderstanding or a computer error. How could anyone figure out how much fraud he or anyone else committed over the years? Plus, many of the caseworkers at the west annex were like the caseworkers on 9th and Mitchell. They rarely, if ever, had client’s sign or date applications. How could you even accuse someone of fraud if they didn’t sign the application? Unlike the court cases on late-night TV, if you accuse someone of financial fraud, you have to have proof. What little proof there was of wrongdoing at the west annex started disappearing almost immediately.
Previously, when I received new cases from other caseworkers after the initial application, I would check for a ‘p/a.’ If the case contained a ‘p/a,’ then I would place that whole record in a separate file cabinet drawer. This way, I could keep track of them.
I had to keep track of the ‘p/a’ somehow as the computer system didn’t have extra fields to keep track of Medicaid scams. When I received the ‘p/a’ fair hearing decision, I went to the same file cabinet drawer to pull out the ‘p/a’ cases. They were all gone! Someone had taken the whole batch of physical case records out of the file cabinet drawer. I had no way to find them. It never occurred to me to make a list. This caught me way off guard. I started to go through the rest of the file cabinets. I pulled out one record after another, but I couldn’t find a single ‘p/a’ case. Angry Frank or even Pat could have easily transferred those ‘p/a’ cases to other caseworkers. Both angry Frank and Pat had keys to
the building and could have gone in after-hours and done anything they wanted with those ‘p/a’ cases.
Many of the caseworkers were like Sue, who I mentioned earlier who just didn’t care.
They would take whatever information the lawyers gave them and rarely asked any questions. Other caseworkers wouldn’t make any notations regarding ‘p/a’ either in the physical record itself or on the computer case. Because of that, even if you could magically produce a list of all of the case numbers for all of the ‘p/a’ cases and looked them up on the state computer system, you might not find much. Even if you could magically produce all of the physical case records for all of the ‘p/a’ cases, you still might not find much information. For many ‘p/a’ cases, the only proof of a ‘p/a’ was the ‘p/a’ contract itself. Remove the ‘p/a’ contract from those case records, and the evidence was gone.
Well, I guess in the end these people were just too diabolical for me. I couldn’t keep up with all the schemes and scams. But at least I stopped one. I have that to my credit. As a side bonus, now I didn’t have to watch attorney Dave make faces at me anymore. He didn’t do that all the time, though. Some days attorney Dave wore one of those yarmulke things like Rachel at the medical complex. When he had that on his head, he was quite civil. After I won the ‘p/a’ fair hearing, I never saw attorney Dave again, hmmm I wonder why? Back to his rat hole I guess to come up with another scheme. How much money did the lawyers make off the ‘p/a’ scam. I suppose looking at attorney Bruce or attorney Dave’s income tax returns might give some insight. Just look and see how many
$5000.00 payments they reported on their tax return, right? But so many lawyers and eventually accountants and financial planners started to get involved; it’s probably impossible to figure out.
I only saw attorney Bruce once after the ‘p/a’ fair hearing decision, and he looked somewhat petrified. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Most of the other lawyers disappeared from the west annex building as well. That was quite a sight. The parking lot emptied of luxury cars. Most of the lawyers that showed up now weren’t pulling any scams. There were some isolated cases, but nothing organized like the personal annuities. There were a few cases that made me suspicious because Pat told me to open the cases without giving me any reason why. I only know that she didn’t have to provide me with a reason since she was a supervisor. Those were applications I had denied or were about to deny. Those were cases with a lawyer involved, so I don’t know if she got something for her effort or not.
To cover myself, I would make a notation in the computer case record for future reference. That way, no one could blame me for opening the case. I made notations when I caught angry Frank working on my cases as well. The problem with angry Frank and even Pat was I never knew for sure what cases of mine they had worked. Angry Frank was such a slippery character. He was by far the more devious one. One day, angry Frank handed me an application to process. I knew something was wrong immediately. He had registered the case and gave it to me in the afternoon. That made me suspicious right away because angry Frank and the girls from his unit usually went shopping in the
afternoons. The case also had a lawyer involved, but the nursing home patient had no assets. I called the lawyer and found out the nursing home patient was a convicted child molester. As soon as I found out, I gave the case back to angry Frank and told him I wouldn’t work on the case at all. Angry Frank looked a little sheepish. He could have written me up or even fired me for refusing to process the case, but I didn’t care. I figured I had to draw the line somewhere. Angry Frank just took the case back and never said a word. For some reason, angry Frank wanted my name associated with the case, but I guess I was too clever, that time at least.
Even Frank, the angry gay man, had to leave sooner or later and then, one day, angry Frank retired. It was the end of an era, I suppose. No longer would I have to worry about angry Frank locking me out of the building if I went out to smoke a cigarette. Yes, he did. Angry Frank also liked to turn out the light in the bathroom if he knew I was the only one in there. Yes, he did that too, but at least he didn’t put any paper tacks on my chair. Angry Frank was a character and hopefully one of a kind because I’m sure the taxpayers could never afford another one like him.
I suppose though that what angry Frank and the others had done wasn’t much different then what caseworkers and supervisors had done in previous years. Vera told me stories many years earlier about how caseworkers had scammed the system back in the 1960s and 1970s. One popular method involved Milwaukee public school teachers. Many of the teachers would show up every year in the summer after classes let out for summer break. The welfare staff would get an avalanche of applications, but the cases would
open and close too fast for anyone to do proper verification. According to Vera, many people would show up to apply for welfare claiming they were school teachers, whether they were teachers or not.
An older caseworker named John, who was also a union steward, told me an interesting story. He said when he started as a caseworker in the 1960’s; his supervisor would open and close dozens of welfare cases every summer. John said his boss wouldn’t let anyone see the cases, and if anyone asked, he would claim they were friends of his. That was before computers and easy verification. By the time anyone could get around to verifying information, the cases were closed.
I bet the amounts scammed back then were nothing compared to what angry Frank and the lawyers pulled off, but it was the same idea. As always, it’s better to leave these situations alone. It wouldn’t look good if welfare supervisors and lawyers and county court commissioners got arrested and dragged into court, would it? It’s better to lull people into complacency by arresting people like Ray or Karen, the caseworker from 9th and Mitchell. Campaign finance violations and daycare fraud are a lot easier for the public to digest. It keeps the courts and cops and news media busy and creates an impression that things are getting accomplished, but it’s just a feel-good exercise.
I should point out that other people caused just as much trouble for me but on a smaller scale dollar-wise. One day I took an application from a person who worked for the old
First Wisconsin bank in downtown Milwaukee. Coincidently she happened to work in a records department. She applied on behalf of her mother, who was in a nursing home who coincidently had all her accounts at the same First Wisconsin bank. When I requested bank account information from the First Wisconsin bank on this person, I received copies of microfiche statements that were damaged. I discovered that my request for information had gone to the supervisor of the woman who had applied. The only information I could decipher on the statements was the name and account number.
It appeared as if someone had scratched off all of the financial information on purpose.
When I questioned the bank supervisor, she claimed it was just one of those things that happened.
In another case, a person applied for a nursing home patient who owned a home.
According to the property record, the house had dozens of owners. If a home had too many owners, it was considered an unavailable asset. The house was outside of Milwaukee County. When I called that county register of deeds, I discovered that the woman that applied also worked in the department I was calling.
One last case I must mention made me wonder about how screwed up the whole system was. A man came in to see me one day to apply for his father and his stepmother, who were both residents of the same nursing home in Milwaukee. As I processed the application, I noticed that the case had already opened and closed in another county in
Wisconsin. When I looked up the case further, I found a comment entered on the computer file by a caseworker from that county. This caseworker left a note on the computer file saying to anyone who looked, don’t open this case unless you call me. I called her and discovered this man was trying to pull a pretty big scam. The caseworker sent me a copy of that county's sheriff investigation of this man. This man would have put any of the Medicaid lawyers to shame. According to the sheriff report, this man’s parents had lived in Milwaukee. After his mother died, things got interesting. The man’s parents had been friends with another couple who lived right across the street. That husband had also recently died. His widow was in the early stages of dementia.
According to the sheriff report, this guy that was in my office had somehow gotten his father to marry the widowed neighbor woman across the street.
Based on the information available to the sheriff investigator, the neighbor woman may not have realized that she had remarried! After the marriage, the new stepson had also gotten his new stepmother to sign a power of attorney form. He also got his father to sign a ‘poa’ as well. With the ‘poa’ in hand, this man proceeded to sell his fathers and new stepmother's houses, and the money disappeared according to the report. He moved the new couple to the county where he lived. Also, the stepmother had over $500,000.00 in cash, which also disappeared. After that was gone, this man had applied for nursing home Medicaid for his father and stepmother. The caseworker in that county had denied the application and called that counties corporation counsel who called in the local sheriff
who produced a report. I was genuinely amazed at how much work went into that report. I denied the case, and the man took his father and stepmother back to his home county and reapplied for nursing home Medicaid. That same worker later told me that their corporation counsel had eventually taken the man to court where a judge ordered him to pay back about $20,000.00. That was only a fraction of the total scammed, of course, but much better than nothing and at least they tried. Episodes like these just mentioned were quite frequent. I could write a whole other chapter on them, but in the grand scheme of things, the specific dollar amounts scammed were just a pittance compared to the personal annuities.
Oh my, the last chapter is at hand, and just in time, you’re probably out of baby aspirin anyways. Don’t worry, sparky; this is an easy chapter, I think. Well, the personal annuity scam, and Frank, the angry gay man, were gone. What was left? Things seemed more peaceful now. Angry Frank didn’t get replaced, so Pat had charge of both units. Several of the older caseworkers retired, and one died, sad. Another caseworker, Debra, had to have emergency heart surgery. Debra was another poster girl for sick time abuse. Debra had more than twenty years on the job but less than fifteen years of paid service. Employees accumulated more than a month off each year, which made her story even more incredible. All the paid and unpaid time off she had meant that she was only on the job on average of two days out of three for the previous twenty years. What’s the point of having a job at all? After the heart surgery, she looked more dead than alive, but she didn’t have enough credit for a disability pension because she took too much unpaid time off over the years as Leeann did, remember her.
One caseworker did go out on disability. She couldn’t stay awake at work, so she retired on Milwaukee County disability pay. She had a medical affliction. It was called ‘I can’t stay awake, so I think I will retire on disability pay’ syndrome. Her condition was similar to the union steward I mentioned who worked at the Medical Complex, who went out on disability. His ailment was called ‘I don’t feel like working anymore, so I think I will fake a back injury and retire on disability pay.’
One day, Bob showed up. He was Pat’s supervisor. He said we were moving to 12th and Vliet. Somebody wanted the west annex building but not the people in it. Go figure. The west annex and the warehouse building or scene of the crimes if you will, were scheduled for demolition. That’s appropriate since there was probably nothing left to steal anyways. A moving company did all of the actual moving for us. I left the west annex one day and went to 12th and Vliet the next.
The cycle was now complete. I was back at welfare central. Vera’s omen had come to pass. The old guys at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue were right after all. At least I never saw any roaches on 12th and Vliet and the janitors never ripped us off as they did at the county grounds. When I worked on 12th and Vliet before, I was in the basement, and now I worked on the third floor.
I made the mistake of going to my orthopedic doctor for a checkup, and he said I needed a new hip. Why not? I figured, what could go wrong, right? Everything I found out. I was on medical leave for a while, waiting for my hip to work again. I finally did attempt to resume my duties. Things had changed quite drastically in my absence. Pat and most of the nursing home caseworkers had transferred to another unit. The nursing home unit filled up with new caseworkers who, not unlike the old caseworkers, knew virtually nothing about nursing home Medicaid eligibility. Wouldn’t you know it; all of the new caseworkers were women/minority, Vera would think that was funny. They were complemented by a new supervisor Jim, who not unlike Pat, didn’t know much about the work either, so I guess everything kind of balanced out. Jim, not the same guy from
Chapter 3, at the courthouse, was a former dormitory supervisor at the county grounds.
He liked to tell stories about how he and his charges would go out and steal vegetables from the public gardens on the county grounds. He bragged that no one could do anything about it as all of the patients he was responsible for were all wards of Milwaukee County and not considered responsible for their actions.
Every day back seemed to bring another surprise. Elaine now worked on 12th and Vliet after getting laid off from the Medical Complex. She was still a supervisor but now with a private office, which I’m sure made her discipline sessions with her sheriff deputy boyfriend/master a much more private affair, thankfully. At least she no longer wore her nurse ratchet uniforms much to my relief. Elaine’s statements about ‘weeding out the Neanderthals’ came to mind as I moved about the building. It looked like the purge was complete. Nearly all of the white guys were gone. When I first started as a caseworker, the department director, a white guy, came to visit the training room. He mentioned at one point that the department was 80% female. That was then; now, the department looked like it was at least 95% female and minority. Percentages this high in the past evoked claims of institutional racism and sexism and were the basis for many lawsuits; what would Vera say now? The only white guys left beside me were older and waiting to retire and all but hiding underneath their desks.
You know, if you create a privileged group or groups within an organization and let them grow unchecked, eventually, they will overwhelm the whole organization. Some people
know how to play that affirmative action card game quite well. No one can do anything about it either. The hiring and staffing policies were created or inspired decades ago by court orders issued as a result of lawsuits filed by women and minority groups against those evil white men. You can’t just change these things unless you have another court order to nullify or modify the existing order; otherwise, you’re in contempt as they say.
Leeann got promoted as incredible as it seemed, the same person that took so much unpaid time off. Cary was now a supervisor. The same caseworker that couldn’t get her work done, so she had to take it home with her, was supervising other caseworkers.
Randy got promoted. Yes, the same caseworker that committed more fraud than anyone in the west annex save for angry Frank. Even Vanessa, the black woman caseworker who thought it was so funny to torment the white guy from the photo id booth years earlier, got promoted. Last I heard she was the department director.
I had an interesting conversation with one of my old supervisors, Peggy. She had stopped in to speak with a supervisor she knew. He was interviewing for a position that her daughter had applied to. He told Peggy that her daughter’s name was on the eligibility list, and he was going to hire her. That was before he had even interviewed anyone!
That’s a violation of civil service rules and even misconduct in public office, but no one cared. Peggy thought the whole situation was hilarious, just another day in the service of the county.
One of the clerical workers that I knew from the west annex got promoted to supervisor as well eventually. I always thought that was quite amusing. When she worked at the west annex, she liked to ‘play’ supervisor. Everyone, including the supervisors, knew about it.
Whenever the mood struck her, I guess she would tell callers to the office that she was a supervisor. She would even make up answers to questions that people had. Her husband made it a point to visit her at work and would wander the west annex going through our offices one by one. That didn’t bother Pat or angry Frank either.
Speaking of angry Frank, he came into the office on 12th and Vliet to submit a nursing home Medicaid application. Maybe it was fate that brought angry Frank and I together one last time or maybe angry Frank knew I was back from medical leave and wanted me to see how well he had done in his retirement. Angry Frank had transformed, and he was even happy to see me. It was almost creepy. I didn’t want to turn my back on him if you know what I mean. He was now, Frank, the happy gay man. Then he gave me his business card, and I understood why.
Happy Frank was now a Medicaid eligibility consultant for several of the Medicaid lawyers. Frank’s friends were giving him his due. I finally understood what attorney Dave meant by ‘putting money aside under the table.’ Happy Frank was now getting his payoff. I have no idea how much they paid Frank, but it was enough to make him smile.
Happy Frank had committed enough Medicaid fraud to spend several lifetimes in
prison, so you just have to hope he got paid accordingly. Poor Ray, he was doing essentially the same thing as happy Frank, but he got arrested. Franks buddies, attorneys Bruce and Dave are still around. Attorney Bruce is on superlawyers.com I had to resign my post in 2002 not long after my return from medical leave as my hip surgery just didn’t work out. Initially, I notified the Human Resource office of my predicament as well as Jim. Jim, in turn, wrote me up for taking off so much work and then threatened to fire me. I later received a letter from a woman I never met who worked in an office I had never heard of who informed me I could return to work as my supervisor Jim had agreed to move my desk 20 feet closer to the door. It was approximately a half block walk to my office from the parking lot. How 20 feet would make any difference was beyond me. But so, it went.
Years later, I called the pension office to inquire about my future pension benefits. The clerk, a minority female, of course, told me that my pension wasn’t that much since I had quit and never came back to work. She made it sound so easy to get hired back into Milwaukee County. I couldn’t tell if she was sarcastic or delusional, but I thought I should give her the benefit of the doubt. I went on the Human Resources website and applied for a position in my old department, just to see. I provided all my county experience and education. Less than 24 hours later, I received a rejection letter from a clerk, another minority female, of course, informing me that I didn’t have the ‘skill set’ for the job. I’m not even sure what that meant.
I doubt if much has changed in the years since I left but I do know the county has shrunk in size to only about half of what it was in its glory days. It’s just a shadow of its former self. It finally got milked dry I guess but, I’m sure a whole new cast of characters and scoundrels have come along to fill the void left by happy Frank and Vera and the others.
No doubt the ratios of female and minorities have stayed the same but now there’s a new twist. There’s lots more veterans in the ranks with their hand out just like Allen the combat payroll clerk. I’m sure there are some token white guys without connections around somewhere, and I bet they know their place, although I never did. Hopefully, someone finished the booger mural by now. Maybe there are daily showings, and you can make an appointment to see it. I bet there’s even a whole new crop of Medicaid lawyers doing their thing.
Who knows what kind of schemes and scams have come and gone in the years since I left, but I bet they were big. The personal annuity is probably just a story now if anyone even knows about it. I don’t think anyone could pull the same scam twice, could they? I’m sure people have moved on to bigger and better scams now. I never did get the big promotion or payoff or even a gift basket, but I still have the memories. I don’t know what became of most of my former co-workers and supervisors, along with the office visitors that collectively made so many of my days eventful. I don’t know if or how many are still on the job, but I’m sure they have nothing to fear as no doubt the statute of limitations has long since expired by now. I must acknowledge all of them as it was their behaviors and mannerisms along with a seeming inability to realize how far their voices carried, which
has provided me with a nearly endless amount of material from which to draw. Thank you.
In the end, I know I can’t complain. Don’t forget; all’s fair in love and work.
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