Michigan human services director to leave post after 4 years

Lansing Maura Corrigan will retire as head of Michigans Human Services Department at years end, completing a four-year commitment she made when she took the job, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Snyder confirmed Tuesday.

Early in his first term, Snyder appointed the former Michigan Supreme Court justice to head the huge, often-troubled state agency, which oversaw various forms of assistance to more than 2.9 million Michigan recipients in 2013.

Her departure at the end of of 2014 has been the understanding from the very beginning when Maura agreed to leave the Michigan Supreme Court to take on serving as Department of Human Services director, said Snyder press secretary Sara Wurfel.

Corrigan wants to leave government so she can spend more time with her family, including grandchildren, in Metro Detroit, department spokesman Robert Wheaton said.

She was a Republican nominee when she first ran for the Supreme Court in 1998 and for re-election in 2006.

Department-head departures by appointees at the end of a governors term in office are common in Michigan. Health Department Director James Haveman recently said he will step down after suffering a mild stroke last spring.

Snyder, whose first term ends this year, is in the midst of a tight re-election race with Democratic challenger Mark Schauer, a former state lawmaker and U.S. congressman from Battle Creek.

Corrigan has been ... a tremendous leader with an unwavering commitment to and passion for serving our states children and families in need, Wurfel said.

She said Snyder was grateful Corrigan was willing to leave her second eight-year Supreme Court term, which would have lasted until next Jan. 1, to take over leadership of the welfare agency in 2011.

This administration inherited large and long-standing problems, including a federal consent decree (the department) was under for states child welfare system, Wurfel said. Major improvements have been made, not only there but in so many other ways ... as well as being fiscally responsible with taxpayer dollars.

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Michigan human services director to leave post after 4 years