Sunshine Request Shows Baker Lied About University Title to Pad Resume

Press Release

Sunshine Request Shows Baker Lied About University Title to Pad Resume

A Sunshine Law response by the University of Missouri shows that Judy Baker lied about her position at University Physicians to pad her resume in an effort to mislead voters while also serving in key positions that led to the loss of $2 million in taxpayer money and the failure to reimburse patients for millions more.

The university responses to the Sunshine request made by the Luetkemeyer for Congress campaign are attached.

The documents provided by the University of Missouri show that Baker never served as interim executive director of University Physicians as she claims. Instead, from 1999 to 2001 her titles were consultant, interim director of operations and interim director of finance.

This is not the first time Baker has been questioned about her official title at University Physicians. In a Columbia Daily Tribune article on November 3, 2004, it was reported that Baker's "official work history provided by a University of Missouri-Columbia spokeswoman did not include that (interim executive director) title."

"Judy Baker lied to the people of the 9th Congressional District about being interim executive director in an attempt to pad her resume and appear like a health care executive, yet Claire McCaskill's own audit found that Baker's tenure cost taxpayers millions and left more than 8,000 patients out in the cold," said Paul Sloca, spokesman for the Luetkemeyer campaign. "Judy Baker is a fraud who failed and mismanaged health care at the local level. This is not the kind of person the people of the 9th District deserve in Washington, D.C."

The records also show that Baker took hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-finance salary during the time period covered by a 2002 audit by Claire McCaskill that found that during Baker's tenure University Physicians lost $2 million in taxpayer money and failed to make payments of more than $3 million to more than 8,000 patients. The new revelations come just two days after McCaskill sought to deny her own office's findings in an attempt to provide political cover for Baker has in the waning days of the election. Even University officials agreed at the time with the findings of the audit in response to McCaskill's audit.

Baker claims she served in the top post at University Physicians for nearly two years during the time of the audit. Baker became University Physician's interim director of operations in February of 2000, about seven months after the audit period began. In early 2001, she says she became interim executive director. The audit conducted overlapped nearly 2 years of Baker's management. Baker continues to offer no evidence to contradict the findings of the 2002 audit.

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