Where are consequences for failing to track mental health spending?

If you or I were to neglect meeting our financial obligations — taxes, renewing driver’s license, paying a water bill or a parking ticket — there are always consequences, at times pretty expensive or legal ones.

What are the consequences when the California mental health program (“Report: Officials still not tracking mental health spending,” Sept. 9) and its overseer, the California Department of Health Care Services, grossly (criminally?) mismanage $17 billion of taxpayers’ money? That, in spite of multiple alarming findings reported over years by watchdog bodies.

There are countries where heads roll for much less serious mismanagement. Never here. Why not?

Maybe in the prevailing atmosphere of anything goes (Trump et al.), we, the people, for whom ostensibly the government exists, deserve what we get unless we complain loudly enough in ways other than in the voting booth.

This story was originally published September 16, 2016 at 8:08 PM with the headline "Where are consequences for failing to track mental health spending?."