When he walked into his ceremonial office in the Statehouse Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Peter Shumlin was armed and ready to take on a bunch of pledge drive perpetrators.

Shumlin was there to host a press conference focused on his efforts to fight climate change. But reporters in the room were just waiting to ask him about a Vermont Public Radio story indicating that a state consultant had warned his administration repeatedly since last April that its new health insurance exchange was at risk of failing.

According to documents obtained by VPR’s Taylor Dobbs, the problems at Vermont Health Connect were so severe that the contractor, Gartner Consulting, advised state officials on May 22 to “escalate missed deliverable dates or milestones to highest levels within the state and [website developer] CGI.”

Here’s what reporters wanted to know: Was Shumlin aware that the state’s own consultants had issued such dire warnings so long ago? If so, why didn’t he disclose the problems to Vermonters? And if he was sufficiently briefed, why did he tell VPR’s Bob Kinzel on Nov. 1 that, by Labor Day, “We did not know the magnitude of the challenges we were going to face interacting with the feds, all the other problems we’ve been having.”

Evidently anticipating the confrontation, Shumlin brought to Wednesday’s press conference a print-out of a July 8 story in the Burlington Free Press. Asked about Dobbs’ story, here’s what the gov said:

Paul Heintz was part of the Seven Days news team from 2012 to 2020. He served as political editor and wrote the "Fair Game" political column before becoming a staff writer.

8 replies on “Faced with VPR Report, Shumlin Claims He Disclosed Health Exchange Problems in July”

  3. It is a good thing that Governor Peter Shumlin and his administration has been “transparent” about Vermont Health Connect and related matters as they keep claiming. One can only wonder what would be the case if they were not.

  4. Today on the Mark Johnson show WDEV the Governor repeatedly spoke of his transparency on the issue and sounded none to happy that the guest before him Speaker Shap Smith has concerns on the issue that he was not filled in properly earlier in the summer and in my words appeared none to happy about the late summer surprise concerning Shummy care. The speaker was careful to not be overly aggressive or offensive but you could hear is concerns. When asked by me on Ch. 17 live show a few months ago if we could expect a primary between he and the Governor in 2014 he guaranteed me No. I wonder if he is having second thoughts, because that could get interesting?

  5. Shumlin cant read “Governors don’t read those reports” how do you expect him to know anything he is dyslexic illiterate. A left wing George Bush.
    Just how much money did he spend with CGI and did CGI send the work to Canada or India?
    The latest meme by Kizel and the rest of the VPR/NPR apologists has Vermonts 5% sign up rate at a cost of 7000.00 for each sign up the best in class for the nation Really 12000 of the sickest Vermonters signed up jeezum crow if that is victory we are in a sad state of affairs.
    I have read that we spent 84 million to make a website also heard from Hospital Workers they don’t have the new billing specs for the new system so that they actually pay the nurses Dr and pay for bandages equipment and the like. Is Shumlin’s system going to fail there too or is that 1/8th inch plywood on his floors and tar paper and orange crates for walls?
    Some one is getting very wealthy form his failures.

  6. The press and comment-writers seem to want to take story in
    the direction of what Shumlin knew, when he knew it and why didn’t he tell us.
    Hello! why isn’t anyone going to dig into the problem itself? e.g. When the
    consultant warned about missed deliverables, dates, and milestones, and
    recommended escalating these issues to the highest levels, who exactly did
    something about it and what did they do? According to Governor Shumlin they didn’t tell him. Did anything happen that helped at all? Isn’t it someone’s job to oversee the contract with CGI, and when there are problems, tell the person who signed the contract (who isn’t Shumlin, actually) when it’s time to get a corrective action plan from CGI or impose performance penalties on them. (I am assuming, of course, that because state law now requires performance guarantees in state contracts, that payment of the consultant was tied to “deliverables and milestones.”
    If those weren’t being met, was CGI getting paid or getting warnings about
    penalties and forced to take corrective action?) Another question: why did the
    missed deadlines get to the point where an outside consultant had to warn the
    state folks this was nearing the point of project failure? How did it get that
    bad to begin with?
    I don’t mean to underplay the Governor’s role in leading his Administration and
    being accountable, but there’s sure a lot more to this story than the Shumlin
    transparency angle, a story that other IT projects could learn from, and I hope
    that doesn’t get lost in the political play. This isn’t the only state IT
    project that went wobbly, and we shouldn’t lose the opportunity to learn and
    get better at this. Building this website to register people for existing
    insurance plans from existing carriers who will pay providers using their own
    existing software systems and contracts, is a hell of a lot easier than creating
    the single payer will be. Don’t we want to be up to getting that done? Those
    who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it or something like that.

  7. I believe we are now being governed by the worst governor this state has ever seen. And, somehow he got Spaulding to go along with him. Very sad state of affairs with these two clowns running this. Nothing is more opague than this administration.

  8. so the governor a liar, big deal, Vermonters are all stupid and our idiot political leaders in monpelier kno best.

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