by Sabrina Salas Matanane, KUAM NewsWednesday, May 14, 2008 Subscribe to Sabrina's newsfeed
The Department of Mental Health's director, Dr. Andrea Leitheiser, is schedule to sit on the hot seat today. One person that plans to take her to task is Senator B.J. Cruz, who says he's not only disappointed, but he's angry at what he says were misleading statements made to him by the director about the funding for the I' Famaguonta organization."I called Dr. Leightheiser and she told me everything was fine and what she was doing was because the money was going to run out on July the 29," he recalled. "I just went through the budgets that were submitted by their office because we're going to have the hearing tomorrow and I noticed that on her submission she admits and she writes down on the budget submittal that the grant doesn't run out until September of 2009 and so she had misled all of us."Cruz is so frustrated with Leitheiser it's prompted him to introduce legislation that would repeal the governor's authority to hold off on a year for acting appointments. He stated, "Her appointment for a year is an act of stepping down for 30 days and coming back on is making a mockery of the responsibility of this Legislature to do advice and consent, and I want to put an end to do it. So that we can have her in here have her confirmed up or down once and for all and she's not honest enough to tell us the truth then she shouldn't be the director and we should move on and find someone else to be the director of that department."