At least five Monroe County Health Department employees, including two supervisors, have departed in the past few weeks, including three last week, two of whom were fired.
A board of health leader and the department’s new administrator downplayed the exodus saying it was caused by post-pandemic fatigue and isolated — non-criminal — employee transgressions.
However, letters written by some current and former employees, as well as an audio recording of a recent staff meeting, reveal a department in disarray, with employees confused about their roles, fearful of being fired and worried that the worsening understaffing problems may be compromising public health during a time of multiple crises.
The health department conducts septic system inspections, monitors for outbreaks of contagious diseases, ensures safe food-handling, operates public health and family planning clinics, and maintains vital records.
Lori Kelley is now department administrator
In the letters, the former employees said they were “deeply concerned,” confused about unexplained ad-hoc policy and process changes and worried about being bullied. The department’s administrator, Lori Kelley, took over the department in summer after long-time administrator Penny Caudill retired.
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The letter writers cited low morale among the staff, being stretched thin and “incredibly frustrated,” and Kelley often being unavailable, unwilling to communicate and making “terrible comments” about other employees.
“I am questioning my role here at the department on a daily basis,” one employee wrote.
One of the letters included a graphic that listed “Eight traits of a toxic leader.”
Much of the information was shared with The Herald-Times by people familiar with the developments but who asked that their names be withheld for fear of retaliation or because they’re preparing legal action. The signatures on the letters were redacted.
Meanwhile, most county leaders declined to talk. Monroe County Commissioner President Julie Thomas, one of county’s three chief executives, referred questions to the health department board.
A subsequent email to Thomas was answered by a county attorney who cited Indiana law and pointed out the department’s supervision lies with the health administrator under assistance from the health officer, Dr. Thomas Sharp. In a subsequent email, the attorney confirmed the appointment of the health officer is subject to approval of the commissioners.
Monroe County Council President Kate Wiltz did not respond to an emailed inquiry. The council provides funding for the health department. Councilman Peter Iversen, the council’s health department liaison, also did not respond to an email.
Sharp has been out of town for health reasons and the health board’s president, Dr. Carol Touloukian is out of the country, according to the board’s vice president, Dr. Stephen Pritchard.
Pritchard confirmed three of five people who wrote letters to the board of health to alert them of the department’s dysfunction are no longer with the department.
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The letters were sent Nov. 10 to all board members and Sharp.
Nonetheless, Pritchard said the identities of the employees who wrote the letters “were never released" to Kelley, though some of the other H-T sources said they disagreed.
In the Nov. 14 staff meeting, Kelley told employees she was disappointed in “all the talking behind my back."
“And going above me and Dr. Sharp to the board and the commissioners is inappropriate, and it will not be tolerated,” Kelley said.
Dr. Stephen Pritchard: Firings 'not a big deal'
Pritchard said he would not go into detail about why two employees were fired last week, except to say the incidents were non-criminal and did not involve a police investigation. He said a third employee who left had been looking for another position “for awhile.” He said two employees who left weeks earlier did so voluntarily because they did not want to adjust to coming back into the office after the pandemic.
Pritchard, a local dentist, said the recent departures were “not a big deal.”
“There’s nothing going on here that anybody should be concerned about,” he said Tuesday in the health department offices on Seventh Street. “We had some turnover recently, but it’s not like a mass exodus or anything. I don’t want anybody to jump to any conclusions.”
However, even before the most recent departures, employees said they were overworked and understaffed, a problem made worse by Kelley’s insistence on cross training employees for various functions and giving them mixed messages about their level of autonomy in making decisions about priorities.
Pritchard said the department has only one vacancy, though he acknowledged that public health in the U.S. as a whole and Indiana specifically is “significantly underfunded.”
“Additional staffing would be a tremendous help to the department,” Pritchard said.
Health board, commissioners in executive session on Friday
The health department board and the commissioners are scheduled to meet in an executive session Friday afternoon “to discuss a job performance evaluation of individual employee(s).”
The meeting is closed to the public, but Pritchard said the board and the commissioners are meeting in part to determine their responsibilities with respect to health department oversight.
“The commissioners and the board may … have a bit of opposing views … which is part of the reason we have that meeting on Friday this week is to work out … some understanding of exactly whose role is what," he said.
Pritchard, who has served on the board for decades, could not immediately say how the recent level of departures compares to turnover the department has seen in the past.
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The two firings last week skewed the numbers, he said, “but these were situations that we’ve, you know, felt needed to be addressed.” Some of those problems dated back years, he said, but were not addressed during the pandemic because staff had to focus on the public health threat.
“There is no effort on our part to hide or gloss over anything,” he said. “This transition has not gone as smoothly as we envisioned for anyone including Ms. Kelley, who I believe to be trying very hard to be successful.”
While the transition to Kelley this summer “was not without its challenges,” Pritchard said he did not know whether the recent departures were related to the leadership change.
“Management style is always different from one person to another, you know, whether that has anything to do with it or not, I don’t know.”
Kelley, who stood next to him during the interview, said, “You have somebody that’s been with the department for such a long period of time … that’s just a big change.”
Pritchard also said the last two, perhaps three, prior health department administrators were hired from within, while Kelley came from outside the department. She previously worked at Cook Medical.
While Pritchard insisted some of the “communication issues” within the department have been addressed and one of the letter writers and two other, current employees told him the atmosphere has improved, a remaining employee told the H-T via email, “I assure you no one, and I mean no one, thinks the atmosphere has improved. No one here speaks, in fear of being fired.”
Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.
