What do we know about the new head of FSSA ?

[hippiechick]

http://www.indystar.com/articles/7/202316-8627-092.html

By Michele McNeil and Vic Ryckaert
[e-mail]
December 15, 2004

James W. Payne is a maverick judge who has ruled Marion County's juvenile justice system with an iron fist for 20 years. He's angered defense lawyers, taken heat for the number of children he has locked up and been reprimanded for doing a lawmaker a favor.

That's partly why Gov.-elect Mitch Daniels picked Payne as the director of the new Indiana Department of Child Services. The move begins Daniels' transformation of the state's largest agency, the Family and Social Services Administration.

Daniels said Tuesday he didn't want someone in charge of protecting Indiana's youngest who sat on a bench for 20 years "and never created a ripple."

"We are people of change. We are going to hire people of experimentation. We will take some risks," Daniels said.


:hippie:

[Voltaire]

1. Judge Payne is a

FUCKING PRICK!!!!! I have to deal with him frequently. DOC Juvenile's loss is FSSA's gain. I feel sorry for them.

[hippiechick]

2. Question ?

ok, not to be devil's advocate here, but is he bad news for the peeps that work there, or is he bad news for the system as a whole ?

i mean, tommy thompson was a bastard through and through, but i'll be damned if some of the state gubmint overhauls they undertook didn't
help to fix a severely broken system.

my opinion on IN state gov't is that they all (present company excluded, Voltaire) need to be fired and start from scratch. that said, however, i don't see the wisdom in bringing in executives with no public policy/public service experience to run the state.


:hippie:

[Voltaire]

3. He will crack the whip there

and for FSSA that may be what they need. There are too many folks that work there that have the power to write checks and that is NEVER good. He will certainly take a daddy parent approach to the caseloads in his department too, just like he does with Marion County Juvenile Court. He does not know balance, however, and each case needs to be treated as stand alone things, not with sweeping draconian mandates. But we'll see. I don't want to extrapolate my dealings with him onto how he will perform at FSSA. But personally I find him as useful as a heaping, steaming plate of dogshit.

I also think if the State treated and paid its employees like human beings it would solve half its problem. It could solve the other half by not letting politicians slander it. The GOP is gonna find out the hard way that its easier to be outside the tent pissing in than the other way around.

[hippiechick]

4. Very true

From my limited experience there I can say that good management/ casework starts from the ground up, but I can't even imagine the Herculean task involved in running an agency as huge and all-encompassing as FSSA. They need to assure that they have excellent point people reporting up to him, and to get excellent point people, you have to PAY THEM WELL.

Wonder if they're using any other state's programs as templates ?
Because one of the things that struck me when I moved here was that State Gubmint (at least, the dept's I was involved with) wasn't organized in what seemed to be any logical fashion.


:hippie:

[thinkingwoman]

7. you've found IN out

"Because one of the things that struck me when I moved here was that State Gubmint (at least, the dept's I was involved with) wasn't organized in what seemed to be any logical fashion."

Yup, that kind of sums up Indiana perfectly. Explains why it is so hard to enact positve, progressive change as well.

[Jokerman]

5. Judge Payne behind school data grab...

He's been trying for over a year to get Marion county school systems to give local law enforcement COMPLETE access to student records through the Juvenile Justice Information Sharing System.

Some schools have already signed on, others are resisting.

[BiggJawn]

6. Payne ran MCJJS like the "HMS Bounty"...

Never met he a kid he wouldn't like....

To throw in Jail!

Gonna be damn few children in Indiana getting "services", but Jim will save Our Bitch Mitch some fat cash.