Inappropriate Content: Hickville Dispach©

Looks like there's another Utah refugee out there doing better than I am. NPR reports that former Utah Governor Michael Leavitt is leaving the EPA to replace Tommy Thompson as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Holly Mullens—Utah's best female newspaper columnist now that JoAnn Jacobson-Welles has, sadly, retired—writes:

My institutional memory stretches back to early 1998, when I covered social services for this newspaper and the state was mired in an infamous class-action lawsuit, David C. v. Leavitt. The National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, Calif., filed the suit in 1993 on behalf of 17 children who had been horribly abused and neglected in Utah's foster care system. Lawmakers had been warned by child protection experts for years of the mess, and looked the other way.

Leavitt inherited the case in 1993, just weeks after beginning his first term. He certainly can't be blamed for it, but he can be questioned for the length of time it took to fix it.

And it still isn't fixed.

In 1994, the state settled the case, agreeing to overhaul foster care and to increase training and case oversight. The agreement was renegotiated in 1999. A federal judge has been monitoring the state's Division of Child and Family Services ever since and has until 2006 to determine if oversight can end. Under much improved DCFS leadership, the system is nearly in complete compliance with the settlement. But 10 years is one long time to wait, and progress has moved glacially. Nine of those plodding years were under Leavitt's watch, and U.S. senators who question him should press him for the why.

Maybe I'm being a bit hard on the guy. Michael Janofsky at the New York Times points out:

Mr. Leavitt as governor probably had a stronger impact on health-related issues than environmental ones, working closely with Washington to give states more flexibility in managing federal health care programs.

In 1994, the Utah Legislature passed his health care initiative that led to an increase of 400,000 people with health insurance in the next 10 years. In 1995-96, Mr. Leavitt was one of six governors who led efforts to reform welfare and Medicaid.

In 1997, he fought to make the new federal Children's Health Insurance Program a separate entity, rather than an expansion of Medicaid, to protect it from economic downturns that would reduce benefits. In 2002, state officials said, Utah became the first state to win a federal waiver allowing it to cut some Medicaid benefits to provide coverage for a larger number of low-income residents.

I'm a bit surprised the phrase "had a stronger impact" made it into print as a description of Michael Leavitt. Standards at the Times must be slipping, because Michael Leavitt's two terms as governor were characterized by an uncanny ability to not actually have any impact on anything at all. I seem to recall quite a few digs at Leavitt's toupee and some debate over how safe the Christmas lights at the Governor's mansion were. There may have been a small fire.

That's it. Leavitt was the perfect Utah politician: a nice guy with a natural instinct for avoiding controversy. He occasionally hyped the Big Idea, such as an entirely on-line college, or his environmental policy of "enlibra," which is a word that means "lets talk about how we all love beautiful forests and mountains majesty, and not talk about that moose I just hit with my car." Leavitt has spent a year as head of the EPA under George W. Bush without entangling himself in any major controversies—surely the most difficult political task since Lincoln had to keep peace between the abolitionists and the moderates. He has done it and still managed to be what the Seattle Post Intelligencer quite rightly calls "a loyal soldier and shrewd tactician."

As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt can be counted on to promote Big Ideas, be loyal to President Bush, and avoid the political messiness that comes from doing things.