On Tuesday, State Rep. Jason Woolford (R-Howell) helped greenlight a subpoena on Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Director Elizabeth Hertel, voting to authorize a subpoena on Hertel and several other government actors. The vote took place in the House Oversight Committee, following several months of Woolford’s efforts to investigate how public assistance programs under the MDHHS have been misused.

“House Republicans are fighting for transparency at even the highest levels of state government because we believe very simply that government functions better when it is accountable to the people,” Woolford said. “We have learned a ton of information this term about how the MDHHS’s public assistance programs have been abused and exploited, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. The only way we can right the ship and ensure things like that stop happening is if we bring accountability to their office.”

Woolford chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on State and Local Public Assistance Programs. His subcommittee has investigated waste, fraud, and abuse in a number of government programs, many of which operate under MDHHS. Most notably among these programs, Michigan’s food assistance programs have seen widespread fraudulent use, likely expending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on ineligible recipients. The subpoena would call upon Hertel to appear before the Oversight Committee to answer questions on September 9^th.

“What we’ve seen out of MDHHS in recent years is an unacceptable level of misconduct,” Woolford said. “Director Hertel is going to have to answer some tough questions on her poor record heading up the state health department. Our out-of-control government’s wasteful spending has to stop, and cutting off the rampant fraud from MDHHS’s public assistance programs is a good place to start.”