JEFFERSON CITY -- A state lawmaker Wednesday morning walked out of a special legislative hearing amid frustration with the testimony of a Nixon administration cabinet officer.  The committee is investigating the failure of a state contract for Medicaid home care services.

Lawmakers want to know why the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services awarded a five million dollar contract to an Indiana-based company called SynCare, which was supposed to evaluate applications for home care services to keep people out of nursing homes.  The state health department was forced to take over the review work when SynCare failed to perform.

"The goal of this committee should be to make sure that whatever happened with the SynCare issue doesn't happen in the future," says Rep. Mark Parkinson.

Critics say a simple Google search would have revealed past problems with SynCare.  "If all you have to do is type the name of a company in Google, and see that they promised X number of jobs, and immediately determined that they could not provide X number of jobs, how is that part of your process," asked Republican Kansas City Rep. Ryan Silvey.

State health director Margaret Donnelly responded that the Office of Administration sets the rules for evaluating contracts and those rules were followed.  "That's how the process is kept impartial," Donnelly explains.

But Silvey also wanted to know why Donnelly wasted months trying to make the SynCare contract work, instead of fining the company.  Silvey accused Donally of not having a clear answer.  She finally responded, "All of the provisions were looked at for what we could do as penalties.  And the one we chose, was to only have them bill at 50%."

After that exchange, Silvey walked out of the hearing room.

This same committee plans to investigate the Missouri Department of Economic Development's vetting of Mamtek before green-lighting the use of state tax credits for a failed artificial sweetener plant in Moberly.  Those hearings are scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving.