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Alexander Group Under Fire for Lifting Pages for Welfare Report

The controversial consultant Gov. Paul LePage hired to provide a report on ways to reform Maine's welfare system is under fire again, this time for allegedly lifting some of its findings verbatim from the work of a Washington D.C.-based think tank on developing welfare-to-work programs.

  A 2011 study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank, looked at ways to improve the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program - or TANF - by using that cash benefit program to subsidize jobs in the private sector as a person is trained for a job.

It's a strategy some states have been using to move people from welfare to work. The Bangor Daily News, in an editorial, points out that the Alexander group study lifts two pages from the Center's report in its latest installment of a nearly $1 million contract with the state to recommend ways to improve Maine's welfare system.

House Speaker Mark Eves, a Democrat, says the state should not be paying the Alexander Group for work done by some other organization.

"It is a sad day when taxpayer dollars are spent so egregiously on what has come to be known as essentially a political campaign document that the Governor wanted to use for his re-election campaign it is egregious that it has happened and needs to stop. And we call on the Governor to cancel the contract and ask for a refund.?

Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew says the Alexander Group erred in not properly attributing the work of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, But she went on to say it's the Democrats that are politicizing the report.

"I am sorely frustrated at the efforts to continually discredit this consultant," Mayhew says, "to detract from the substance of the work - this is punctuation over policy."

Speaker Eves says the section of the report lifted from the Center follows what he and other Democrats have been advocating. "We have been pushing hard for reforms to our anti-poverty programs, and we know that the best reform is for people to be able to access job training that is required to get those good-paying jobs."

Eves says the nearly $1 million being spent on the report should have been used to help Mainers on welfare get the skills they need to get a good job.

Gary Alexander, in his statement, acknowledges that the report falls short of his firm's own standards, and says the mistake in not fully attributing the material from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will be corrected. He says the ultimate report will provide a "road map" for Maine to reform its welfare system.

The final report from Alexander is due in July.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.