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Inmates To Butchers: Bill Would Create Meat Processing Program

Inmates To Butchers: Bill Would Create Meat Processing Program

By Jenna Ross, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

SAGINAW, Minnesota – The men filed into the locker room, throwing on red aprons and rubber boots.

“Same jobs as yesterday,” supervisor Michal Jasek told them.

One guy heaved a huge bucket from the walk-in refrigerator. Another started the bandsaw. Then they broke down the hundreds of chickens they had slaughtered that morning — slicing skin, cutting bone, weighing wings.

The workers at this meat-processing shop, part of the Northeast Regional Corrections Center, are inmates. Some state lawmakers hope they will become the next generation of butchers.

Under a bill introduced this month at the Legislature, work shifts at this minimum-security facility would become a formal curriculum, training the men for jobs in meat processing after they’re out. New workers are needed in the industry, some experts say, as the demand for local meat grows and the owners of slaughterhouses and butcher shops grow old.

Two-thirds of the owners of Minnesota’s small meat-processing facilities are at or near retirement age, according to a recent survey by the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute. Just one-third have succession plans, the survey shows.

“There’s a need to take some action here and make sure that we don’t lose this vital part of the agricultural infrastructure,” said Paul Hugunin, with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Each year, about 600 men serve short sentences at the Saginaw corrections center, a work farm started in the 1930s that sits on 3,200 acres north of Duluth. They grow hay on about 400 acres.

They plant potatoes, corn, and carrots. They raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs.

The inmates eat much of the meat for lunch and dinner, but the facility also butchers animals for farmers, for a fee.

The idea of a formal training program sprang from Representative Jason Metsa (DFL-VA), who was trying to think of “creative ways to attract more farmers to our area.” He’s pairing the pilot program with the corrections center’s request for a new $1.2 million food-processing building — pitching a USDA-inspected facility as the answer to local farmers’ laments about a lack of meat-processing spots in northeastern Minnesota.

Keith Nelson, a St. Louis County commissioner, told the House Agriculture Policy Committee last week that some producers in his district have to travel 250 miles round-trip to have their chickens readied for sale.

“There’s a lot of us around that could gain a great deal of value from such an operation,” said Nelson, a beef farmer who serves on the correction center’s board.
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PHYSICAL WORK

Knives, regulations, and a map of the Czech Republic hang in Jasek’s office in the meat-processing plant. After growing up there, in a village of 300 people, Jasek traveled by bus and train for hours each day to study meat processing, part of a three-year degree.

In Minnesota, there is no such educational program for butchers and meat cutters — who, on average, make $18.53 an hour, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. One in Pipestone shut down. But the University of Minnesota offers a broader meat-science degree.

Jasek, a St. Louis County employee, assigns the inmates simple tasks, he said. Some stay only a few weeks. Others he can train more thoroughly.

“It’s hard work,” he said, folding his broad-knuckled hands. “Physically demanding work.”

Partly because of those demands, it’s tough to find skilled help, said Mike Lorentz, chief executive of Lorentz Meats, a meat processing plant in Cannon Falls that specializes in organic and high-end protein. So he’s glad the proposal is raising the issue.

The meat-processing industry is diverse — ranging from small retail shops to Hormel Foods’ plants — so the training varies, too, Lorentz said. Working at an urban butcher shop might require wine-pairing knowledge, he said, while at Hormel, an employee might do a single cut all day long.

“For us, it’s harder to train people up,” said Lorentz, whose 30,000-square-foot facility employees 90 people. “The challenge with the bill is, who are you helping?”
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RISE OF LOCAL MEAT

At the farmers market in Grand Rapids, Jane Grimsbo Jewett sells beef, pork, and chicken. But beforehand, her cows and pigs must travel to a meat processor in Foley — a 115-mile drive each way. The chickens trek to a processor 75 miles away.

“It’s costly in terms of fuel and time,” Grimsbo Jewett said.

But Grimsbo Jewett, a research fellow at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, knows that building and upgrading meat processing facilities is costly, too. “A lot were built in the 1950s — or even earlier — and requirements have changed a lot,” she said.

About 41 percent of Minnesota’s small processing facilities have clocked more than 50 years, the survey by the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute shows. The Department of Agriculture offers grants to processors to buy new equipment or expand or upgrade their facilities, Hugunin said.

Southeastern Minnesota offers farmers “pretty good” options for meat processing, said Jan Joannides, executive director of Renewing the Countryside, a nonprofit. But in northeastern Minnesota, “there are real gaps in terms of availability.”

In particular, there are few USDA-inspected facilities, “the gold standard,” as Joannides put it. That inspection allows the meat to be sold in other states. Facilities inspected by state employees according to federal standards can sell to grocery stores and at farmers markets, just not across state lines.

There are few of either in northeastern Minnesota, said Jennifer Stephes, meat inspection supervisor for the Department of Agriculture. Her office has heard from farmers and local producers there looking for closer options.

“There’s this growing interest among the public and among policymakers in having more local foods,” Joannides said. “There are farmers out there willing to do it. But oftentimes it’s the middle part that’s a bottleneck.”

A lack of inspectors might be contributing to the problem, Grimsbo Jewett said. Governor Mark Dayton’s (DFL-MN) budget calls for five more meat inspectors, an increase of $250,000, citing “a significant increase in requests for inspections in the past six months.”
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‘YOUNG AND DUMB to ‘SOLID’

During a midafternoon break, the men gathered in the room with the smoker, opening its door to grab a few browned birds. They spread them on a sheet of butcher’s paper, sliced them open, and dug in.

They paired the chicken with dark coffee, drunk from white mugs scrawled with their names and nicknames. Shawn Wirta’s mug says, “BOSS.”

Wirta was 17 years old and drunk when he crashed his grandparent’s Buick, hitting a car turning into a driveway on Arrowhead Road in Duluth. A passenger in that car, a 22-year-old man, flew through the back window and died.

“It is what it is,” Wirta said last week, shaking his head.

He came to this work farm in Saginaw a “young and dumb” kid. But 18 months of meat processing taught him about hard work. “When I came out of here at 19 years old, I was solid,” he said. “I got out of here wanting to work. It fills up your day, it takes up your time, it keeps you out of trouble.”

Wirta nabbed a job as a butcher, after “showing them what I could do,” he said. He skinned hogs for a season, moving on to sausage making. “I could pretty much cut up any animal you want me to cut up.”

He was sent back to Saginaw for leaving the state, not allowed under his probation. In a month, when he’s released and his probation ends, Wirta plans to spend time with his three-year-old daughter, who visits him here twice a week. Then he’ll head back to his farm in Florida, where he raises goats and chickens.

Photo: Jerry Holtvia via Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS

A Senate Race Where Democrats Neutralized Obamacare Attacks

A Senate Race Where Democrats Neutralized Obamacare Attacks

By Sarah Chacko, CQ Roll Call (MCT)

The Republican critique of the president’s health care overhaul law may have hit a wall in Minnesota, complicating the GOP’s already long chances of picking up a Senate seat in the state.

Though the state’s health care exchange, MNsure, has hit a few snags in recent weeks, local Democrats still claim the program is an overall success — at least relative to other states. A University of Minnesota study credited the Affordable Care Act for dropping the state’s uninsured numbers to roughly 5 percent, making it the one of the lowest in the country.Minnesota also touts the lowest premium rates and generally low health care costs.

Those statistics have made it more difficult for businessman Mike McFadden, the GOP’s nominee, to challenge Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) for supporting the president’s signature health care law. Franken is the front-runner in the race, and independent polls show him with a small double-digit lead.

“The Republicans hope that the toxicity of the moniker Obamacare would lead to this kind of mob running against the Democrats has not happened. Voters are hearing different things,” said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at University of Minnesota. “It’s turning out that Democrats have found strategies to fight to a draw, which in 2014 is probably the best they could hope for, at least on this issue.”

Franken’s campaign has focused on the state’s achievements and the more popular aspects of the law, including a provision he helped craft that requires health insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on services, as opposed to administrative overhead.

McFadden initially opposed that language as part of his position to repeal the health care law, but he later said he would consider keeping the policy when pressed on the issue in an August interview with WCCO-TV. In a recent debate, McFadden has said his major gripe with the health care law is that states can make better decisions than the White House.

“I believe the states are laboratories for experiment,” he said in an Oct. 1 debate.

If we allow the federal government to do it, our health care system will look like the VA, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”

Franken warned repealing the law could lead to greater frustrations, sending a divided Congress back to the drawing board.

“Do you think this Congress now, as gridlocked as it is, is actually going to come up with a health care plan with guarantees to cover pre-existing conditions and all the other stuff that we’ve seen?” Franken concluded in the debate.

To be sure, the rollout of the Minnesota health care exchange last October was as rocky as the Healthcare.gov launch. Software errors and technical glitches ultimately lead to the resignation of MNsure’s first executive director.

But things have been smoother for MNsure since then — at least until last month when Preferred One, the cheapest and largest provider that carried 53 percent of the state exchange’s commercial plans, withdrew from the exchange. Two weeks later, the Minnesota Commerce Department announced premium rates are expected to increase an average of 4.5 percent in 2015.

A Democratic strategist familiar with Senate races said though Democrats did not make the health care law a centerpiece of their campaigns, they were concerned those two events would cause their numbers to drop.

Despite Republican attempts to tie those issues to the candidates, polls since then show Democrats maintaining or improving their leads in the state, the strategist said.

In surveys, Minnesotans mirror the nation’s discontent with the health care law; 44 percent said they consider MNsure “mostly a failure” in a September poll.However that has yet to sway their opinion in the Senate race. The same poll showed Franken’s support at 49 percent, a number that has not changed by much since then.

“I haven’t seen it working,”the strategist said. “The die is just so far cast.”

McFadden and his supporters say Franken’s support of the health care law exemplifies the incumbent’s partisan slant and blame him for following the party line to bring a “Washington-based policy” to the state.

“A lot of things that we’ve seen MNsure, for lack of a better word, ‘solve’ were already things that our existing program could have done,” said John Rouleau, executive director of the right-leaning Minnesota Jobs Coalition “And things that MNsure has done, it hasn’t done that well.”

Franken has also been criticized for not pushing harder against a medical device tax included in the health care law, which affects the hundreds of medical device companies in the state, including Medtronic and St. Jude Medical. Franken, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, says he worked with former Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to cut the tax in half and has since advocated for repealing that part of the law.

Minnesotans disgruntled about the state’s health care program also may decide to place the blame on the governor’s desk instead of Franken’s.

McFadden’s argument requires voters to tie what’s happening in the state to what the federal government did, said Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield. Meanwhile, the debate in the gubernatorial race about state management is gaining more traction, he said.

“At the end of the day, Mark Dayton is going to be held responsible for that, not Al Franken,” Schier said.

The Rothenberg Political Report/Roll Call rates this race as Democrat Favored.

Photo: John Taylor via Flickr

States Pursue Tax Cuts As Recovery Takes Hold

States Pursue Tax Cuts As Recovery Takes Hold

By Elaine S. Povich, Stateline.org

WASHINGTON — Maybe New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should borrow a pair of crutches. They might have helped Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s cause.

Dayton, a Democrat, hobbled into the state Capitol five weeks after major hip surgery and blasted lawmakers for holding up the tax cuts he wanted. After quarrelling over his spending proposal, including a spat over funding for a new legislative office building, the Democratic-controlled legislature approved a $443 million tax cut, without the office building rider. Dayton pushed hard for the cuts, in part, because some are retroactive to 2013, meaning tax filers who are preparing returns now could take advantage of them and see refunds soon.

Meanwhile, Cuomo is locked in a battle with the legislature and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over whether to increase taxes to fund prekindergarten education in the city and state. The mayor wants to raise the surcharge on city earners making more than $500,000 annually, from 4.25 percent to 4.45 percent. The state has to approve city tax increases.

Fellow Democrat Cuomo said finding money for pre-K can be accomplished without a surcharge on the wealthy. Instead, he wants tax cuts, including a property tax reduction that he said would save the average homeowner about $350 a year. The legislature is struggling with the tax increase proposal and has not acted, but the Republican-controlled Senate is not inclined to give de Blasio what he wants. Both Dayton and Cuomo are running for re-election.

At least 30 states are considering some kind of tax change this year, mostly tax cuts, as the economic recovery takes hold. In states where revenues have failed to keep up with estimates, some lawmakers are considering raising taxes.

In Delaware, where revenue projections are down from earlier estimates, there is talk of corporate tax increases. The Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council projected that revenues in the current fiscal year that ends in June will fall $107 million short of a previous projection in December, due mostly to lower revenues from corporate income taxes. That has led Democratic Gov. Jack Markell to propose an increase in corporate taxes — ironic for a state that is viewed as the most corporate-friendly in the U.S.

In New Jersey, however, where revenues are estimated to be lagging as much as $400 million behind projections, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has not proposed new taxes in his fiscal year 2015 budget.

A trial balloon by Democratic Sen. Raymond Lesniak to increase the state’s gasoline tax to fund infrastructure repair has stirred up a firestorm, causing him to lower the proposed increase from an extra 24 cents a gallon to 15 cents.

A recent poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University showed 72 percent of those surveyed opposed increasing the gas tax, while 63 percent called for a higher tax on millionaires instead.

Republican governors are having an easier time with tax cuts, particularly in states where the GOP also dominates the legislatures, but squabbles remain in many states in the thick of legislative sessions this spring.

A survey of state lawmakers by the National Conference of State Legislatures found tax policy topping the agenda in about a dozen states this year and being a significant part of the discussion in many more. At the same time, states still worry about the economy.

“We still have high unemployment, and there are a lot of unknowns about when the next downturn will occur,” Democratic Sen. Richard Devlin, chair of Oregon’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means, said in the NCSL survey. “We are better off than a few years ago, but we are reluctant to use the word ‘stable.’ There is nothing to celebrate.”

Still, tax cuts are on the table. Cuomo traveled around New York this week pressing for his property tax reduction. “Homeowners get it. Taxpayers get it. The politicians don’t get it,” Cuomo said in a press conference in DeWitt.

He is urging local jurisdictions to make up for the lost property tax revenue by finding ways to combine services to save money. “The easy answer for government is raise taxes. If the choice is change how you are doing things, find economies of scale, get creative, work with local governments in a way you’ve never done before,” he said. “Raising taxes is always the easy answer. That’s why we have the highest taxes in the nation. That’s why people are leaving upstate New York.”

In Minnesota, the tax cuts provide $57 million in retroactive tax relief on returns filed for 2013, meaning that up to 270,000 state taxpayers will get some of the $49 million in income tax cuts in their tax refunds this year, according to the state Department of Revenue. About $8 million of the cuts go to businesses. The cuts partially make up for a $2.1 billion tax increase passed in Minnesota last year.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, has also been battling local governments over cutting taxes. Pence signed a bill this week that reduces the corporate income tax from 6.5 percent to 4.9 percent in steps by 2021. He signed the bill despite opposition from local governments, which get $1 billion annually in corporate tax revenue.

Pence said the law “does not unduly burden our local governments. It gives our local governments the ability to make decisions for themselves about what would enhance their ability to attract investment.”

Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin also inked a tax cut bill this week that will give state residents an average income tax cut of $46 each in April 2015, and homeowners an average cut of $131 each on December 2014 property tax bills, according to the legislature’s nonpartisan budget office.

Farmers and factory owners would also get a total $36.8 million in cuts. Walker and the Republicans see this reduction as an incentive for businesses to stay or locate in Wisconsin. Democrats in the divided legislature considered it a giveaway to the state’s wealthiest residents.

In Arkansas, Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe had his veto of a sales tax break for sand used in oil and natural gas drilling overridden by the Republican-dominated legislature. The state Department of Finance and Administration had removed the exemption, and the legislature decided to put it back. The governor supported his agency’s decision, but the legislature had other ideas.

Arkansas state Sen. Jonathan Dismang, who chairs the committee that drove the override, said, “I’m not sure it really increases how much we’re competitive (with other drilling states). It does reflect our willingness to want to have industry in the state.” Dismang stressed that the tax exemption is not new and had been on the books since the 1960s, before the department decided to scrap it.

In Oklahoma, the Republican-controlled House and Senate have passed dueling tax cut bills, both triggered only when state revenues rise to certain levels. In the Senate bill, the highest income tax rate would be cut from 5.25 percent to 5 percent, if projections for the state’s general fund revenue reach a level high enough to offset the revenue loss. The rate could drop again, to 4.85 percent, if revenue growth continues enough to make up for the additional cut.

The House bill does not have the second tier in it, but includes a corporate income tax rate cut from 6 percent to 5 percent, and also includes revenue growth triggers. The earliest the reductions could take place is 2016. The chambers are attempting to reconcile differences in their bills before the session ends in May.

“There’s a 50-50 chance we will have an income tax reduction,” Republican Rep. Earl Sears, vice chair of the appropriations and budget committee, said this week, noting that the bills are quite similar. Last year, the Oklahoma legislature tried a similar tax cut, but it was tied to repair and restoration of the state Capitol and was thrown out by the state Supreme Court, which ruled it was “logrolling,” or trading of favors, Sears said.

This year, there’s no mention of the Capitol repairs. Democrats would like to reallocate any surplus to other programs, but Sears said he is treating the taxpayers “like a state agency. Just like we fund any other agency, we’re funding back to our citizens.”

In Illinois, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn called for making the “temporary” income tax hike instituted three years ago permanent. Besides opposition from the legislature, Republican Bruce Rauner, Quinn’s opponent in his re-election bid, is against the measure. Without action, the personal income tax rate is scheduled to drop back to 3.75 percent from the current 5 percent, costing the state treasury an estimated $4 billion.

Tax cuts are easier to accomplish when states are seeing higher revenues. An analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts (which funds Stateline) found that, after adjusting for inflation, total tax revenue for the 50 states combined finally recovered from its plunge in the recession in the middle of last year. But recovery varied widely. Only 20 states were back to their peak levels by the second quarter of 2013.

According to data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau, state tax revenue has continued to rebound, showing growth for 16 straight quarters through the end of 2013, which is midway through most states’ current fiscal year. Tax revenue in each quarter was higher than the same quarter of the previous year.

Photo: Pat Arnow via Flickr

Epic Fail: Where Four State Health Exchanges Went Wrong

Epic Fail: Where Four State Health Exchanges Went Wrong

by Charles Ornstein,ProPublica.

Much has been written (and will continue to be written) about the spectacular failure of health insurance exchanges in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon and Maryland — all blue states that support the Affordable Care Act.

All were woefully unprepared for their Oct. 1 launch, and unlike HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace, they are still having trouble getting back on their feet. As a result, enrollment in those four states has lagged behind other states, including many that actively oppose the health law.

The New York Timesrecently reported on how problems in these states could give Republican candidates an opening. “Last month, the Republican National Committee filed public-records requests in Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oregon seeking information about compensation and vacation time for the exchange directors, four of whom have resigned. All five states have Democratic governors whose terms end this year. Three of them 2014 Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota and Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon 2014 are seeking re-election,” The Times reported.

One common element emerging in the coverage of these exchanges is that at least some state employees knew they were heading for disaster but didn’t take action early enough to remedy it. All the states have blamed some, if not all, of their problems on outside tech contractors. Here’s a sampling of what has been reported in each state.

Oregon

The Oregonian newspaper has done a great job chronicling the unfolding disaster with Cover Oregon. The state is the only one in which no one has been able to enroll using the website. In an article last month, the newspaper reported that a technology analyst at Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services warned last May that managers at the exchange were being “intellectually dishonest” in claiming it would be ready Oct. 1.

As the Oregonian set forth in its findings:

  • The project’s significant flaws were well documented dating back to November 2011. Multiple independent analysts repeatedly raised questions about poor management along with strong doubts that it could be operational by the Oct. 1, 2013 deadline.
  • Cover Oregon leaders wavered between despair and an almost evangelical enthusiasm that they could complete the site. In the end they charged ahead, piloting an unfinished, largely untested exchange project right up to the Oct. 1 go-live date with no backup plan ready to go.
  • Senior officials in Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office and elsewhere read at least some of these warnings but took no significant steps to intervene, apparently after being convinced by others the project was on track.
  • A key official in the massive IT project took steps to silence the critics. The Oregon Health Authority last January withheld payment from the company hired to monitor the project, claiming its persistent criticism was inaccurate and inflammatory.

The director of Cover Oregon left on medical leave in December. The Oregonian also has a good piece comparing Oregon’s failures with the successes of Kentucky, whose exchange has been lauded.

Minnesota

Blame is being spread around in Minnesota, where the MNsure exchange is sputtering and its call center is unable to keep up with demand. As news site MinnPost reported last month: “The vendors are blaming the state. Gov. Mark Dayton and state officials are blaming the private companies who built the faulty technology, and MNsure leaders are quick to point out that they weren’t around when controversial decisions were made. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are saying that the governor needs to take responsibility for the project.”

MinnPost reported that despite their efforts to blame vendors, state officials were responsible for key decisions:

Newly released contract documents suggest the state and MNsure leaders had a more direct role in the health exchange’s many missteps than they have publicly acknowledged.

In recent weeks, Gov. Mark Dayton and MNsure officials have increased their criticism of vendors, blaming the private technology companies for some of the underlying problems and glitches with the health exchange’s operation.

However, in early May, the state of Minnesota in effect took over responsibility from its lead contractor, Maximus Inc., for constructing MNsure’s technical infrastructure, according to contract amendments released to MinnPost by MNsure.

The new documents show that the exchange staff quietly made a significant change to its key contract for building MNsure 2014 just months after making major revisions to the timeframe and size of the project.

Dayton later said he was unsure if senior MNsure staff were keeping him apprised of the serious issues with the exchange as soon as they came up.

The Star Tribune has reported on lengthy delays at the exchange’s call center and how officials in charge of the project received bonuses before its disastrous launch.

As in Oregon, the head of Minnesota’s exchange also resigned.

Massachusetts

In many ways, Massachusetts should have been a leader in setting up its own exchange. After all, its 2006 health reform law signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney has been cited as the model for Obamacare. But the state’s exchange, the Massachusetts Health Connector, has fumbled.

The Boston Heraldreported last month that “state officials overseeing the Health Connector website knew as early as February 2013 — some nine months before launch — that parts of the $69 million Obamacare gateway would probably be delayed, public records obtained by the Herald last night revealed.”

The Boston Globefollowed up with another report:

Massachusetts officials knew in July, three months before the launch of the state’s ill-fated health insurance website, that the technology company in charge was far behind on building the site and that there was “a substantial and likely risk” it would not be ready, according to a state official’s memo.

The website launched on Oct. 1 was incomplete and riddled with errors that frustrated consumers, blocked some from getting coverage, and required the state to move tens of thousands of people whose applications could not be processed into temporary insurance programs.

The head of the Massachusetts Health Connector Authority, which runs the insurance marketplace, was copied on the July memo. But the executive director, Jean Yang, and her staff never told the Connector board during its monthly public meetings that the project was off track, according to meeting minutes.

The Globereported in a separate story how an untold number of people who “applied for Connector plans without financial assistance have not gotten coverage, because their payments were lost or somehow never linked to their accounts.”

John J. Monahan, a columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, put it like this last weekend:

Massachusetts’ universal health care program was the model for Obamacare. And now, it seems, the Obamacare website fiasco has been modeled by Massachusetts.

The state contracted with the same software company that messed up the launch of the Obamacare website to redesign its Health Connector website for people to buy insurance. It was scheduled to be working Oct. 1 to renew insurance for Jan. 1. It still isn’t working.

Maryland

The Maryland Health Connection, like the exchanges in other states, knew well in advance that it wasn’t ready to launch, but the problems weren’t fixed in time.

The Washington Post reported last month how “senior state officials failed to heed warnings that no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan for how it would be ready by Oct. 1.”

Over the following months, as political leaders continued to proclaim that the state’s exchange would be a national model, the system went through three different project managers, the feuding between contractors hired to build the online exchange devolved into lawsuits, and key people quit, including a top information technology official because, as he would later say, the project “was a disaster waiting to happen.”

The repeated warnings culminated days before the launch, with one from contractors testing the website that said it was “extremely unstable” and another from an outside consultant that urged state officials not to let residents enroll in health plans because there was “no clear picture” of what would happen when the exchange would turn on.

Within moments of its launch at noon Oct. 1, the website crashed in a calamitous debut that was supposed to be a crowning moment for Maryland officials who had embraced President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and pledged to build a state-run exchange that would be unparalleled.

Weeks later, the Baltimore Sun’s Meredith Cohn wrote a piece about just how much trouble she personally had trying to enroll:

For a chunk of two recent days, I tried to buy insurance on the Maryland health exchange.

My editors asked me to do this because Gov. Martin O’Malley recently told a national television audience that the “website is now functional for most citizens.”

They wanted to know what “functional” meant, especially after hearing stories from consumers about a glitch-prone website created under the Affordable Care Act for the uninsured and underinsured. Marylanders have described frozen screens, lost information, error messages and even mistaken identity.

My own enrollment took 5 hours and 22 minutes over two days, two calls to the exchange’s call center, seven times entering my personal information, two computers and two web browsers.

Maryland’s exchange director resigned in December. Last week, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a law that would provide a backup method for hundreds of residents to get coverage effective Jan. 1 if they can show that they tried unsuccessfully to get coverage from the exchange.

Have you tried signing up for health care coverage through the new exchanges? Help us cover the Affordable Care Act by sharing your insurance story.

Photo of Governor John Kitzhaber: OregonDOT via Flickr