Indiana Spending Criticized: DCS Leadership Shake-Up Raises Questions About Government Priorities and Taxpayer Money

This article comes to us from the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Speaking of the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Nikki Kelly will be with us here in a little bit to talk about some big, big stories. We love Nikki Kelly. So the head of DCS, Department of Child Services, disappeared for three months. Adam Krupp is his name. This was in mid-January, and he essentially disappeared and then popped up on social media claiming that he had had a medical emergency. To my knowledge, he never publicly disclosed what the medical emergency was, and suddenly he now quit that position yesterday. So for three months, I think he got paid the whole time, or most of the time. I don’t know that for sure. But the point is he stayed in this very important position. If you guys remember, this may have been a month or so ago when he was still missing, I asked you guys, I said, look, I am very sympathetic to anyone being ill and I want them to get healthy and I want them to recover from their illness. And I want the best of health for everyone. And I met Adam Krupp one time. He seems like a nice enough guy. I’ve interacted with him on social media a couple times too, so this is not an indictment of him. But when you are the head of a very important agency which is in charge of protecting children, which DCS is, I’m not down with you disappearing for months at a time and not disclosing to me, one, what the deal actually is, and two, when you’re coming back. Because, oh, and by the way, you make $210,000 plus benefits because I’m paying for you. You’re in charge of the government that I pay for. I don’t think it makes me insensitive, while I’m wishing you a speedy recovery and the best of return to full health, that if you’re going to be in this position of prominence and power, you give up some right to privacy.

Unanswered Questions Surround Adam Krupp’s Disappearance From DCS

No, I don’t need to know what you’re doing 24 over 7. I don’t need to know the results of every blood test. I don’t need to know the fine details of what medication you’re taking. But I do have the right to know if I’m paying your salary, you’re an agency head, you’re making six figures, and you’re in charge of kids and the well-being of kids. I do have the right to know what’s going on with you. And I do have the right to know when you’re coming back. And I do have the right to know what you’re doing to ensure your office is maintaining the same level of standard. And I do have the right to know if you’re getting paid while you’re gone. But I didn’t get to know any of that. So then yesterday, three months later, more than three months later after he left, an announcement comes out that Krupp is no longer the head of DCS. He’s been replaced by a woman by the name of Jennifer Dorfmeyer, who has been leading DCS in an acting capacity while Krupp was gone. Okay. Problem solved, right? No no no no no no. Because not only is Dorfmeyer now going to get a significant raise, according to the Capital Chronicle, from $167,500. By the way, when we talk about public servants, think about this. This is one of the things that outraged me when I was in the government. You guys may know I spent two very long years in the Indiana state government. Like if I make it to 95 years old, I want on my tombstone, he should have lived to 99, but he made a mistake and went to work for the state of Indiana. Like that’s what I want on my tombstone. I lost, I have no doubt, years of my life being pissed off and frustrated every day working for the state. And one of the things that really angered me was how horribly the rank-and-file state workers were treated and how they were paid versus the tippy-top people, who I felt like were, for the most part, totally worthless and did next to nothing. I know I told this story on the radio. I don’t know if I’ve told this story on the show, and we have new people on all the time. For those of you who don’t know, I spent two years in the state government. I worked for the Indiana State Auditor’s office. I worked for three state auditors in a matter of about six months. Someday we’ll tell that whole story. I think we’ve touched on it briefly on the radio show, but someday I think enough time has expired. Maybe I’ll just tell the whole story now that I work for myself again. I think I’ll tell that whole story. Maybe we’ll have Aaron Sheridan come in with me and she’ll tell it with me. But I worked for three state auditors in six months, and then I tried to leave and they wouldn’t let me leave. They said, no, no, no, you’ve done a really good job. We want you to stay. I was like, I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home. And the Pence administration initially offered me the job as the director of the Medical Licensing Board. True story. And I was like, I’m not a doctor. Like, you don’t have to be a doctor. You’re just an administrator. I was like, I think you should probably have some sort of medical background to do this. Like, no, no, no, you did a great job. You’ve run a business. We like you. And this is when I still to some extent believed in Mike Pence. Little things were happening, and maybe we’ll talk about some of these things. It’ll be a why does Rob Kendall hate Mike Pence origin story, and it all stems from this period of time. And so they came to me and said, we want you to be Medical Licensing Board director. I was like, I think you have to be a doctor. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s just an administrative role. I was like, well, Medical Licensing Board, abortion, and there’s a lot of really passionate people on that. For the amount of money that you guys pay, I don’t think so. No, no, no, I’m going home. And then they came back and they’re like, what if we made you the pharmacy board director? It’s like we just had the conversation that I think you have to be a doctor to be the head of the Medical Licensing Board. They’re like, no, no, no, no, it’ll be fine. They’re like, we really need to reform the Professional Licensing Agency. We got a couple guys down there. You come down with those guys and you guys can storm the Bastille and turn this thing upside down. And stupid me, I said okay.

Inside Indiana Government: A Firsthand Look at Waste and Mismanagement

And when I got down there, I realized, and again someday maybe we would probably have to do a whole show on all of this, and maybe we will do that because you guys seem to like the Rob Kendall origin stories, what I realized down there, because I was in charge of people, first of all, I realized the state of Indiana under Pence, and I’m sure it has not changed under Holcomb or now Braun, they don’t give a damn about taxpayers or taxpayer service or anything about saving money. They care about status quo and not letting bad headlines leak out. That’s it. If you find a problem and you want to fix it, that means you have to acknowledge the problem, which means a bad headline might get out. And they’re like, true story, Jason will remember this because he went, he will remember this, they made me go on these conference trips like to other states. And I looked into the conference trip and I’m like, there’s nothing I’m going to learn here that’s going to help the taxpayers. There’s no need for me to go. Let’s save the money. Let’s put it toward our workers. You’re talking thousands of dollars. You got to go out there, you got to pay to go out there. I don’t fly, so I had to pay to rent a car. And I told them, I’m not getting on the death tube. Under zero circumstances will I get on the death tube. Like okay, well you can rent a car and go. So I said, well, I ain’t driving to Washington, D.C. Didn’t we go to South Carolina, to Savannah? That’s right, it was Georgia. And they were making me go on these trips, and I was like, I’m not doing this. But they made me go, and I was like, well, I’m not driving across the country, I’m not doing this, blah blah blah blah blah. So I’m looking into the hotels, what they’re costing, where they’re making us stay. I was like, this is a complete waste of money. There’s no need for this. There’s nothing I’m going to learn at these conferences. And they’re like, you have to go. So I went. My highlight of going to one of those trips was I got into a, it wasn’t quite a shouting match, but it was a very spirited back and forth with a DEA guy over them lecturing on the dangers of legalized marijuana. And I started, it wasn’t shouting, but it didn’t look well in my permanent record. I said, you guys are getting people hooked on these dangerous opioids left and right. You allow these dangerous opioids to destroy people, and you have the audacity to sit here and flap your gums about legal medical marijuana. Anyway, one of the things, this is a true story, when I was in charge of people, I had a group of people that worked under me, the customer service representatives, and all of these things that I would do to save the taxpayers money, all of these things, they had me go to these meetings and this is a waste of time. We’re understaffed. I should be doing stuff to help my workers out so that we can process these licensure claims and all of these things that we’re supposed to be doing. Because aren’t we supposed to be here for the taxpayers? And they would fight with me about this, and they would yell at me about this, and they would lecture me about this. They hated me and I hated them. But when it came time for reviews of your workers, Pence came out and announced, he said there’s a merit pool and we’re going to give, if your workers exceed expectations, you’re going to get X amount of raise. If you meet expectations, you’re going to get X amount of raise. And I was like, okay, chance to reward my peeps. These people who were, they were two women and they were doing the work of like ten people. I was like, great, I can reward my peeps. So I do these evaluations of these people and I lay this out and I say, okay, they all exceed expectations. These people are phenomenal. They’re hard workers. They deal with all this crap every day. They deserve whatever the number is. I think it was 5%. Okay. 5% raise. I turn the form in. Keep in mind, this is not for me. I’m not getting like, I’m talking about my workers. And my boss then comes back to me and goes, yeah, we’re gonna need you to change these evaluations. What? No. Why? This is how they did. This is the work they performed. Well, we’ve already exceeded the merit pool. You’ve what? But when the governor made his announcement, he didn’t make any mention about there was a limited amount of money. He said we’re going to reward people who have done their jobs right. Yeah, well, there was an amount of dollars, and we’ve exceeded the merit pool. Well, how did you do that? These women are making, I don’t know exactly, 35, 40 thousand dollars a year. A 5% raise is what, a couple thousand dollars, right? And it’s two or three women. What are we doing? What is the merit pool? Who exceeded the merit pool? Come to find out, they exceeded the merit pool because the tippy-top people gave themselves the good evaluations, and they’re making these six-figure salaries, and they blew through the merit pool. That’s when I quit. I said, I’ll be leaving now. You people can go f yourselves. And I told the people on my way out the door, I said, that was not my evaluation. That’s the evaluation they made me give you. You’re getting less money. Take it up with them. We are a state that benefits the tippy-top people at all turns, including the government.

Pay Raises and Promotions Raise Concerns About State Spending Priorities

So long story to bring this all back, there is a point to what I was doing there. This woman, Jennifer Dorfmeyer, who is now the new head of DCS, her salary is going to rise from $167,500 to $210,000, which is what the previous guy, Adam Krupp, was making. Okay, maybe we could have, like, what if he offered her 190? She was going to turn it down? No, I don’t want to be the head of DCS and I don’t want that $35,000 raise, you people can stick it. No. See, that’s how you would do it in the real world if it were your money. That’s how corporations do it or small business owners do it. You think they’re just like, well, the last guy made this, you make this? No. You negotiate. You’re like, hey, we want to promote you. Here’s what we’re offering. And you would offer less if you actually gave a damn about the taxpayers because she wouldn’t turn it down. But let’s just put that aside for a second. So she’s making what the last guy made. No big deal, right? Well, it is a big deal because the old guy has a new job. The guy who disappeared for three months and we still don’t know what happened, who wasn’t working, he’s now come back and he is now a special adviser to Mike Braun. And you want to know how much he makes? You think, okay, special adviser, what do they pay him, by the job? What, are you making 30 grand a year? Oh no no no, he’s still making his full $210,000. The guy disappeared. And look, I met Adam. Like I said, I think I met him once. He was nice. I will tell you the conversation I had with Adam Krupp, because I don’t give a damn anymore. What are you guys gonna do to me? I will tell you the one conversation I remember having with Adam Krupp. This is a true story. So one of Micah’s employees, who I will not name, was very concerned about behavior in Micah’s office. Micah Beckwith. This is a person still in Micah’s office, by the way. So not some disgruntled employee who left. And this person reached out to me and said, I need to talk to you about what’s going on in Micah’s office. I said okay. I met with her and I was like, this is not The Godfather. I’m not meeting in some dimly lit restaurant where someone can drop the gun and take the cannoli, right? I said we’re meeting in a public place. And if you’re serious about this, we’re meeting where people can see us. They said okay. So we went and met and had the conversation. By the way, the best part? The guy who is accused of sharing the AI porn walked in and saw us meeting. That was the best. And the look on his face, like you know how in Beetlejuice where the eyes just pop out of his head? That’s what it was like. Anyway, I’m there and we have our meeting. It’s fine. She said some very disturbing things about Micah’s office. But we have the meeting and it’s fine, and I’m getting ready to leave and I see our friend Jim Merritt. And I said, well, there’s Merritt, I’m going to go over and say something to Merritt. And I didn’t know who he was meeting with. And I go over and I meet with him. I say, hey, Jim, how’s it going? And then he introduced me. He says, this is Adam Krupp. Well, I’ve seen Adam Krupp on social media before, so I recognized him. And I thought, okay, I’m in a crowded room, this guy is a right-hand guy to Braun, I could just do the cordial thing and say you guys have a nice day, or I could stay here and take up as much time as I can so as many people will see me talking to this guy as possible, and they’ll wonder what the hell’s going on. Well, guys, I’m Rob Kendall. So what do you think I did? And this guy, this poor Krupp guy, he is just like, get the hell out of here, what is going on? And I made sure I stood next to him and not Merritt too, so you know who walked past one of Braun’s top guys and he looked up and he was like, what the hell is going on here? So anyway, that is the one time I met Adam Krupp. Seemed like a nice enough guy. But you have gone from this guy, it doesn’t matter whether he’s a nice enough guy or not, you disappeared for three months. You didn’t tell the public what’s going on. I’m sorry if you’ve been ill. I wish you the speediest of recovery. But as we talked about a month ago, when you have a job of prominence in the government, you are accountable to the taxpayers. You have to be transparent with taxpayers. You have to ensure the job is still being done. And quite frankly, you shouldn’t be taking taxpayer money if you aren’t doing the job.

Taxpayer Accountability Questions Grow as New Roles and Costs Expand

Now, this guy who apparently still can’t do the job either quit on his own or was voluntold he was quitting, and his landing spot is a special adviser role where we have no idea what this guy does. None. The woman who is now running the place is making the same he’s making. And so the taxpayers now have lost, well, what would that be, 210 minus 167, public school math on the fly here, $42,500. So we lost $42,500 and this guy has a position, we don’t know what he does. And by the way, if you got rid of his position, we’re losing $210,000. Really? When you say this guy has no business being in this position. Yet last year we were told there was no money to fund state government without raising your taxes by $1 billion. But somehow there’s $210,000 for a brand new position for this guy, who we have no idea what he does. Pretty freaking wild, isn’t it? There was no money to fund the government vital services without raising your taxes by $1 billion, but Diego Morales has wasted over $300,000 in unused vehicle history reports. There’s no money to fund the government without raising your taxes by $1 billion, but now there’s billions of dollars to give to the Chicago Bears for a brand new stadium. At every turn, you see how full of crap these people are when they tell you there’s no money without raising your taxes. You see how they’re lying to you. You see there is money. You see there’s plenty of money. The revenue is never the issue. It’s the allocation of revenue that’s the issue.