Though Vermont’s accusations sound worse, I actually think Massachusetts has the stronger case for firing Gruber. Baker asked for — and received — resignations from four members of the board, including Gruber, which gives him control over the body. And while it’s tempting to think that this is an elaborate excuse for targeting one Jonathan Gruber, political liability extraordinaire, it seems worth mentioning that the performance of Massachusetts’ Health Connector was an absolute disaster in the transition to the Affordable Care Act. Last year’s operation was so bad that the state scrapped the whole operation and started over. This year the system performed better, but there were still major glitches. It’s not unreasonable for a new governor to come in from a different party and want to appoint some people who weren’t involved in the prior catastrophe.

Vermont, on the other hand, seems to be elevating lazy invoicing to a potential criminal offense. Here’s the nub of the accusation: Gruber submitted two consecutive invoices in September and October claiming the exact same figures — 100 hours for Gruber at $500 per hour, 500 hours for his research assistants at $100 per hour. Only one research assistant worked on the project, according to the auditor’s report.

Those numbers sure are suspiciously round, aren’t they? They’re also pretty high — as a consultant, I once billed nearly 300 hours in a single month, and a February to boot, but I kind of had to stop sleeping to do it. But they’re not physically impossible. Moreover, the auditor doesn’t seem to be arguing that Gruber was fraudulently billing for work the state didn’t get: “In spite of concerns about the invoices, it appears the administration was satisfied with the work of Dr. Gruber and his RA,” the report says. This is not a case of a contractor billing for work that was never performed, or an hourly employee running up his paycheck for hours he wasn’t actually there. It’s a case of a contractor who was given a contract for a deliverable, delivered it, and then threw together an invoice where the numbers added up to the amount the state was supposed to pay him.