Human Services Commissioner Goodno leaving Pawlenty administration

07/11/2006

Conrad deFiebre,
Star Tribune
Last update: July 11, 2006 – 2:54 PM

Human Services Commissioner Kevin Goodno, who has led Minnesota’s biggest state agency through sweeping changes during Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration, is leaving the government for a lobbying job.

He said Tuesday that he will resign July 25 to establish a government relations practice at the 200-attorney Minneapolis law firm of Fredrikson & Byron, which has many clients in the health care field where Goodno has been a government leader.

Goodno, 43, spent 12 years as a Republican member of the Minnesota House from Moorhead, where he also practiced law, before being tapped by Pawlenty in 2003 to head the Department of Human Services.

The agency, with an annual budget of nearly $9 billion and 6,900 employees, has broad responsibilities for subsidized health programs, welfare, child protection, nursing homes and sex offender treatment facilities.

“Kevin has been an outstanding leader in reforming Minnesota’s mental health system, changing how the state purchases health care and in improving the lives of vulnerable children,” Pawlenty said in a news release. “We will miss him, but wish him well.”

Goodno, his wife, Linda, and their three small children now live in Woodbury. His new job will pay “a bit more” than his $114,000 annual commissioner’s salary, he acknowledged.

Among the achievements of his 3½ years as commissioner, he highlighted:

• Overhaul of Minnesota’s mental health system with improved access, tracking and crisis services for patients, plus continued movement away from regional state hospitals toward community-based facilities. Old state hospitals at Fergus Falls, Walker and Willmar are slated for closing while the fourth of nine new local facilities being planned had a ribbon-cutting Tuesday in Rochester.

• Improvements in child welfare, including more services for foster children and a state initiative to help the White Earth and Leech Lake Indian tribes develop their own reservation child welfare systems.

•Rapid expansion of state involuntary commitment facilities for sexual predators from fewer than 200 patients to more than 300 while responding to an escape from the St. Peter Security Hospital last spring. “It was one of our major challenges to get the right security in place,” Goodno said.

• Moving the department’s administrative staff from an old rented warehouse on Lafayette Road in St. Paul to the new Elmer L. Andersen Human Services Building downtown. “It was a major logistical issue,” Goodno saod.