Charges against Health Director Hambley

My specific thoughts on the the four charges as presented against Health Director Hambley

CHARGE I: MS. HAMBLEY DEMONSTRATED INCOMPETENCE, MISCONDUCT, AND NEGLECT OF DUTY BY MAKING FALSE PUBLIC REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT BUDGETARY SCENARIOS.

I believe that Ms. Hambley acted professionally and responsibly in alerting the Ottawa County community to the potential risk that the proposals generated by Chair Moss entailed. Her actions did not cause panic, but rather gave proper notice to the community. I believe that her extensive responses to Administration were both reasoned and good faith responses.

I believe moreover, both before she was excluded from the further crafting of the Public Health budget and after,  that she was attentive to the requests and far from ignoring them, diligently gave the necessary and correct answers to both the requests and the external proposals being made by Chair Moss and refrained from discussing in public any internal proposals.

Ms. Hambley was effectively cut out of the budget process on Friday August 25 at 3:53 PM, when Administrator Gibbs sent an email to Karen Karasinski asking her to take over the drafting of the changes to Public Health’s budget. (Exhibit I). Her role at that point was relegated to simply answering questions of a technical nature so that Fiscal Services could craft final revisions to the Public Health budget - if and only if she was specifically asked by Fiscal Services to do so.

The element of the charge that she was peremptorily putting forth information as final in a August 30 Press Release  and ‘lying’ about the status of the budget is belied by the fact that the Release was mirroring prior statements from Administration and Board Chair Moss from their Press Release two days earlier on August 28. (Exhibit 8 and Exhibit O)

The element of the charge that states “While Ms. Hambley was publicly proclaiming that the completed budget ‘will be’ $3.8 million and services ‘would be eliminated,’ she was privately admitting to her staff that ‘services are continuing as usual’ until ‘after October 1, 2024,’ and ‘budgets are being discussed’ and ‘have not been finalized’ (Exhibits G, L and O),” is disproven by a reading of the actual email, instead of an untrue characterization in which Ms. Hambley’s words are in part simply omitted. The sentence in question reads (in Exhibit G) “If you have clients contacting you with concerns, please let them know that services are continuing as usual and budgets have not yet been finalized so we are unable to give definitive answers as to what will happen after October 1, 2024.” It is unfortunate that Counsel chose to abridge the actual email in this manner.

In my view, Counsel and Chair Moss have not demonstrated in charge one that Ms. Hambley is unfit to continue in her position because of her incompetence, misconduct, and/or neglect of duty.

CHARGE II. MS. HAMBLEY DEMONSTRATED INCOMPETENCE, MISCONDUCT, AND NEGLECT OF DUTY BY FALSELY CLAIMING THAT SHE WAS NOT INCLUDED IN THE BUDGET PROCESS.

Ms. Hambley made a number of statements that indicated that she began to feel excluded from the further crafting of,  and active engagement with, the Public Health budget following Administrator Gibbs’ August 25 email. In my opinion, following two days of testimony, and the ability to cross examine witnesses, Counsel has not shown that she was factually incorrect in her statements. Perception of events is, of course, subjective. But if our employees are stating that they feel they are being marginalized, it is not our job as leaders to tell them that they are lying, or that it’s not true. Much less is it our job to levy charges of incompetence, misconduct, and neglect of duty against them for expressing that.

One element of the charge is that “On August 25, 2023, Administrator Gibbs sent an email to Ms. Karasinski and Ms. Hambley, with the latest budget scenarios, and requested that Ms. Karasinksi ‘please work with Nina and Kris to set the exact budget numbers within the above parameters.’ Nina Baranowski is the Public Health Financial Manager and Kris Conrad is an Administrative Assistant in the Public Health Department. Clearly, the Health Department was not being bypassed when the County Administrator requested that the head of the Finance Department work with two high level employees in the Health Department.”

The email in question (Exhibit I), far from showing that Ms. Hambley had an active involvement in the budget process, shows the exact opposite. The email was addressed to Karen Karasinksi, and read :"Hi Karen, Good afternoon. Please take the following action to draft Public Health’s budget:…”  Contrary to Counsel’s assertion in this Charge, the August 25 email was not directed to Ms. Hambley. She was merely copied on it.  The directives in this email from Administrator Gibbs regarding budget preparation were to Ms. Karasinski, not Ms. Hambley. This supports Ms. Hambley’s statements that she was, indeed, being excluded from the budget development process.

The email further instructed Ms. Karasinksi to “please work with Nina and Kris to set the exact budget numbers within the above parameters.” It was clear that the Administrator did not intend Ms. Karasinski to work with Ms. Hambley, or at least expressed no desire that she do so.

Emails such as the one from August 28 (Exhibit K) that state “Thank you for cc’ing me on the request you sent Friday afternoon to Karen for changes to the Public Health FY 2024 budget” further demonstrate that Ms. Hambley was definitely not part of the process, and as she stated at the hearing August 25, was ‘on the outside looking in’.

Further emails listed in the charges (Exhibits J, K, L, O, and P) simply reinforce this, and that any role that Ms. Hambley had was purely one of serving as a technical resource for questions that Commissioners, Administration or Fiscal Services might have had.

A final element of the charge accuses Ms. Hambley of not being truthful in her public statements because she “admitted in her August 28, 2023 email that she was providing program information to Fiscal Services…” (Exhibit K). In this email, Ms. Hambley said, in part, “It is important for both Fiscal Services and Public Health to work together on your new request for budget amendments, since there are program details that Karen will need from Public Health to attempt to do what you have asked...” This is quite obviously stating a desire of Ms. Hambley that Fiscal and Public Health have a stronger relationship in formulating the budget changes, and an offer from Ms. Hambley to once again hopefully be able to assist more substantively in that process.

In my view, Counsel and Chair Moss have not demonstrated in charge two that Ms. Hambley is unfit to continue in her position because of her incompetence, misconduct, and/or neglect of duty.

III. MS. HAMBLEY DEMONSTRATED INCOMPETENCE, MISCONDUCT, AND NEGLECT OF DUTY BY FAILING TO COOPERATE IN THE BUDGET PROCESS.

It is very apparent to me that not only was Ms. Hambley deliberately shut out of an active role in formulating changes to the Public Health budget after August 25, it is likewise apparent that, although she was being deliberately sidelined, she worked very hard to overcome these obstacles so as to assume the most productive presence possible.

Charge 3 states in part that Ms. Hambley failed to create a budget as “as close to the below-directed level as possible” (Exhibit E). The vagueness of the request aside, Ms. Hambley did respond to the request on Thursday, August 24, 2023 5:08 PM (also Exhibit E) with the statement that “it is impossible to create an exact budget as the Health Department is unable to operate at this funding level.” Ms. Hambley was making the very understandable observation that it was not possible to create a budget at any level close to $2.5M. Administrator Gibbs and Chair Moss may not have liked to hear that response, but it is a reasoned response nonetheless. Proof of this is that the final General Fund (GF) and State ELPHS contribution, including fund balance transfers, finished at well over two times that amount, with $4.8M in GF contributions and approximately $700K in state ELPHS funds as well.

An element of the charge is that “Throughout the budget process, the Finance Committee and Board of Commissioners would have found it useful for Ms. Hambley to provide information concerning the acceptable minimum Health Department funding.” However, as shown on page 109 and following the Communications on the Public Health exhibit list, that information was indeed made available to Administration and Chair Moss.

Additionally, I find it highly disingenuous that this line of argument is being made when Ms. Hambley had made it very well known that anything close to $2.5M was never going to meet Minimum Service levels, either in the aggregate or in the specific service level. They well knew that, for Ottawa County to be reasonably above the Minimum Service levels, the General Fund transfer would need to be at least $4M.

In my view, Counsel and Chair Moss have not demonstrated in charge three that Ms. Hambley is unfit to continue in her position because of her incompetence, misconduct, and/or neglect of duty.

IV. MS. HAMBLEY DEMONSTRATED INCOMPETENCE, MISCONDUCT, AND NEGLECT OF DUTY BY MAKING FALSE CLAIMS THAT ENCOURAGED AND CAUSED CONFUSION, ANXIETY, FEAR, AND PANIC IN THE COMMUNITY.

Charge four makes the argument that, because Chair Moss’ proposal was not a final proposal, or a proposal that the Board was set to vote on, that it somehow is exempt from scrutiny. Counsel further argues that Chair Moss’ proposal for a $2.5M GF transfer was an ‘internal’ proposal and therefore it was inappropriate for Director Hambley to offer her vierws on it. This idea makes little sense. Chair Moss first brought up his proposal in a Finance and Administration meeting on August 21, and he made a fuller proposal on his website and social media as a Press Release. His proposal was far from internal and was indeed designed to be a public document.

Additionally, Chair Moss holds heavy sway among the Board majority, and it is very logical to think any proposal by Chair Moss could very potentially pass the Board. As such, not discussing the proposal or having an artificial prohibition on discussing it likewise makes very little sense.

Charge four is, in many senses, the key argument among the four that Counsel has put forward to attempt to show that Director Hambley is “Incompetent, engaged in misconduct and habitual or willful neglect of duty,” and the fact that it is such a weak argument, relying on the fiction that Chair Moss’ proposal was unimportant or somehow exempt from scrutiny speaks volumes about their entire case against Ms. Hambley.

This proposal was a drastic series of recommendations that had the effect of creating a deep crisis in the Ottawa County community about the ability of the Ottawa County Health Department to carry out its statutory duties. The Board would be wise to look at the Proposal itself as the source of any public ‘panic’, and not shifting that responsibility entirely onto someone else who had no role in creating these proposals nor crafting the subsequent budgets, namely Health Director Hambley.

In my view, Counsel and Chair Moss have not demonstrated in charge four that Ms. Hambley is unfit to continue in her position because of her incompetence, misconduct, and/or neglect of duty.