Agency wants DHHS head fired after funds cut

The state outraged mental health providers a couple of weeks ago with an abrupt cut in government payments for a basic service offered to thousands of clients. Providers said the cut threatens clients' health and the businesses' ability to stay alive.

A local government mental health office in Western North Carolina now wants Carmen Hooker Odom, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, to pay with her job.

The board of the Western Highlands Network wrote Gov. Mike Easley last week, asking him to fire Hooker Odom for pushing the state mental health system "to the brink of total disaster."

The cut represents "the worst conduct possible of someone in her position," the letter says. Western Highlands covers eight counties, including Buncombe, Henderson and Madison.

It appears Hooker Odom's job is secure.

"The governor has every confidence in Secretary Hooker Odom and he has asked her to make certain the state is not overpaying for community support services," Easley's communications director, Sherri Johnson, said in a statement.

"He will be getting a fuller accounting from her, but he has been monitoring this situation and is familiar with the audit she has performed that shows providers have been over-charging and misusing these services. That cuts deeply into the funds that would otherwise be available for other mental health and substance abuse services and there needs to be a significant adjustment."

Hooker Odom said she needed to act decisively to curb overspending. She said she is responsible for proper spending of federal Medicaid money, which pays more than two-thirds of the cost for most patients who use the basic service.

"I am absolutely duty bound to be responsive and responsible to their requirements," she said.

Susan V. Hendrick, Western Highlands' board chairwoman, said providers in her region were particularly vulnerable to the rate cut because many opened or expanded within the last year. Providers moved in to take up the slack after the financial collapse of the region's major mental health provider.

DHHS has given Western Highlands more than $1 million in aid this year to shore up programs before and after the big provider closed, Hooker Odom said.

"If they are claiming that I am insensitive to the people of the state and the consumers of the state -- for Western Highlands to claim that even about their own service area is just not accurate," she said.

Gingrich will plug his novel

Newt Gingrich, a novelist, former House Speaker and possibly future presidential candidate, will be in Raleigh next month to promote his new novel.

He will provide a reading of his historical novel, "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th," which he has co-written with historian Bill Forstchen, at Quail Ridge Books at 7 p.m. on May 16.

He will speak the next day to the John Locke Foundation at an event that will be held at Sister's Garden and Catering Co. on Millbrook Road.

The book store signing is free. The luncheon costs $50 per person.

Giuliani to speak in Raleigh

The Civitas Institute, the Raleigh-based think tank, will have a crowd of prominent speakers at its Conservative Leadership Conferee, which will be held April 27 and 28 in downtown Raleigh.

Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani will open the conference. Other speakers include U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, and U.S. Reps. Virginia Foxx, Patrick McHenry and Health Shuler (a Democrat).

The three GOP candidates for governor -- Bill Graham, Bob Orr and Fred Smith -- will speak. So will conservative activists Grover Norquist and Richard Viguerie.