The Aug. 12 Sun Journal headline, “Video sting targets MaineCare” highlighted an effort to show the public that a Maine bureaucracy is vulnerable to fraud. Guess what? All bureaucracies are vulnerable to fraud.

The headline could have been more newsworthy as “Maine bureaucracy effectively counters outrageous attack.”

Clearly, James O’Keefe wishes to show government employees in a bad light.

I volunteer to supervise O’Keefe on one of the vacant caseloads at the Department of Health and Human Services office for a week and video his work there. That would give everyone a laugh, but it wouldn’t help deal with the serious problem of clarifying what people want government to do.

Government employees are doing what legislators say they want done. The governor is managing that “doing.” Unfortunately, the Legislature has said it wants far more done than there is money to do and the governor doesn’t respect or trust his employees.

It’s a wonder anything gets done, given the context within which government operates, but to make a farce of the eligibility determination process is to totally miss the point as to what’s wrong.

The Legislature (the state’s board of directors), and the governor (the executive), are out of touch with their management responsibilities. The folks at the firing line (such as the ones determining eligibility or the ones moving a kid from one foster home to another), do high quality work and it is outrageous that anyone let some jerk from away come here and make them look bad.

Jim Tierney, Auburn