I was always open to the media, and I keep on doing this. This is something I know they will appreciate.

Gema G. Hernández

My role as a caregiver for 18 years and my personal experience with government entities as a unaccompanied minor in the Cuban Refugee program molded certain traits in my personality and gave me a desire to fight for the underdog even if that fight will put in jeopardy my own well being.

Those seven years that I spent as a ward of the state in the children’s welfare system taught a very important lesson. It is not ethical or moral to take advantage of the frail. This lesson guided my actions as Secretary of the Florida Department of Elder Affairs and put me in a direct collision course with politicians, elected officials and private agencies who wanted to use taxpayers’ money to reward supporters or for private entities to be compensated for their efforts during election times.

I don’t intend people to understand my motivation to do good for others unless they have been at the other end of the stick, unless they have been at the mercy of a government or at the mercy of an agency whose only reason for their existence is to make money for its CEO. In our culture the desire to keep a job or power position is the ultimate goal regardless of the moral, Christian or ethical compromises you have to make in the process. I am not from this culture nor do I believe I have to compromise my principles in order to build consensus. If closing my eyes to fraud is a sign of good management then I am guilty of being a poor manager. If awarding contracts to agencies that have been previously fined for multi million dollars “billing errors” is a requirement to be a consensus builder I agree I am not prepared to build consensus if I have to move my ethical and moral bearings. If accepting blind orders from my superior is a sign of team building I am not able to do that if my actions are going to harm others.

My years as a caregiver taught me that while people like my mother were waiting for services, CEOs of agencies were leasing a BMW with the money that was supposed to provide services and getting bonuses in the $20,000 range at the end of the year. During my tenure as Secretary I refused to close my eyes and play dead. I refused to follow the crowd of the politically well connected if the price of admission in that distinguished club was to take advantage of vulnerable and frail people. Taking advantage of vulnerable people comes in many forms and one of them is by perpetuating a status quo that benefits certain individuals at the expense of putting more food in the houses of elders or providing more days of bathing and Respite for the needy. The “pilots” that I tried to institute were all about that and the powerful enemies I encountered in the process were also about money and contracts, not about food and services. They wanted more money from the coffers of government and I wanted more accountability in order to award those contracts. All the evidence contained in 3 boxes were ready to be presented to Carole Green on September 11, 2001 at 1:30 P.M. at the Capitol. Unfortunately, that was the date of the terrorist attack and the hearing was cancelled never to be scheduled again. Ms Green and others wanted to make sure the paper trail disappeared quickly like it did. Thousands of papers were shredded after my departure from the department, so much paper that a private company was contracted to destroy the evidence.

For a person with my background the choices were very clear: Do I continue to throw taxpayers’ dollars to well connected private entities by awarding contracts without a rigorous analysis or do I open the permanently closed doors to the public and bring new players into the sacred government contracts arena; new players that could be more representative of the small businesses the Governor was trying to promote. Of course, by the time the Bush spin doctors released the news it sounded twisted, corrupted and suspicious. Bush’s contradictions in reference to my departure were never fully investigated by the press. Nobody bothered to ask why the cover up on his part?

It is time for the media to read between the lines. Politicians and some agencies always have limited responses. It is up to you to ask the right questions. And to the Associated Press, I don’t know who is writing the press releases, but I don’t want to be mentioned in the same sentence as Mr. White.