GREENFIELD — For State Auditor Suzanne Bump, increasing the government’s transparency and accountability is the key to earning the public’s trust.
That’s the charge of her office, and it was the prevailing theme of her keynote address at the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce’s annual breakfast Friday morning, where she spoke about the addiction crisis facing the state, her office’s efforts to reduce government waste or ensure resources are properly allocated, and how the public’s trust in government might be restored.
Bump put a special focus on addiction, a topic that’s been front and center in Franklin County and the region for the past two years.
“There’s one issue that’s been on the minds of many of us, both inside and outside government recently. It’s that the scourge of addiction is taking so great a toll on our families, our healthcare system and our communities,” Bump said. “That we all have to change our behaviors and attitudes to stop it.”
She noted the “great strides” taken last week with Gov. Charlie Baker’s signing of a comprehensive bill aimed at curbing overprescription of powerful painkillers and preventing addiction from taking hold.
Some local leaders have said future legislation needs to focus more on the other end of the addiction spectrum — getting those who are entering recovery into long-term housing or other situations that will help them maintain it.
Franklin County, as Bump noted, suffers from a shortage of such services, though it will be getting a short-term detox facility this spring.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, who introduced Bump, told The Recorder that the Senate plans to “continue identifying gaps and push resources into them.”
“We know we’re going to need additional beds and additional treatment resources and we will continue ramping up,” he said. “We need to make sure there’s a wide range of options available.”
He noted at least three bills preceding the prevention legislation focused specifically on treatment since he became Senate president.
Bump described how her office has been participating in a joint state-federal working group aimed at reducing opioid painkiller abuse and overprescription.
Bump spoke of the initiatives her office has been taking to improve the state government’s transparency since she took office in 2011, which have included reducing fraud in the state’s MassHealth Medicaid program and other public assistance programs and identifying grave staffing and management deficiencies within the state Department of Children and Families that led to the deaths of some of the children whose interests the agency was charged with protecting.
“It’s the steady drip of accounts of chronic deficiencies in managing resources, projects and programs, not just the occasional instance of individual wrongdoing, that erodes public confidence,” she said.
“When voters become disenchanted and they don’t show up, then our democracy has weakened,” she said. That sentiment, she noted, is being “exploited” by some who have their eyes set on the public office, including the presidency, with effective results.
“It’s an issue that cannot be solved with rhetoric, we need actions to solve this problem,” Bump said. “The key to building public trust is investing in government accountability.”
And accountability, she said, needs to be a “front-end function” in government, not an apology after the mistake’s been made.
Following the breakfast, Bump spent part of the day in Franklin County, visiting The Recorder newsroom and meeting with local leaders on the Opioid Task Force, including Sheriff Christopher Donelan and Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan.
You can reach Tom Relihan at:
trelihan@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 264
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