Barrett drops health chief nominee

Nannis had drawn outcry from council

Mayor Tom Barrett is withdrawing his pick to serve as temporary head of the troubled Milwaukee Health Department.

Barrett said Monday he was dropping his appointment of Paul Nannis because it was clear that he did not have the votes to be confirmed by aldermen.

“This isn’t about political gamesmanship. This is about the Health Department,” Barrett told the Journal Sentinel. “I don’t hear anyone talking about kids.”

The Common Council is poised to instead appoint Patricia McManus as interim health commissioner without Barrett’s backing. A resolution to appoint McManus, the president and chief executive officer of the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin, was introduced Monday by Council President Ashanti Hamilton.

McManus’ appointment is scheduled to go before the full council Tuesday.

The health commissioner would be paid from $118,000 to $165,000 a year.

Barrett called for an “open and transparent process,” and was noncommittal about whether he would support McManus. The mayor said he is hoping the council will hold a public hearing on the McManus resolution.

“I’ve known Pat for 25 years and like her very, very much. My intent for the interim position was to have someone familiar with the operations of running a health department,” Barrett said. “And that still is my concern.”

The city’s Department of Employee Relations has launched a national health commissioner search, and the deadline to apply is Feb. 23. In a letter to aldermen, Barrett said he intends to appoint a permanent health commissioner in early April.

If McManus is not approved by the council for the post, Barrett said he was prepared to submit a nominee for the temporary job. But he declined to name that person.

“I am not, however, going to place a qualified and suitable candidate before you to be considered for the interim position when it’s unclear whether she or he would be provided with the professional courtesies that should be afforded to an individual willing to serve,” Barrett said.

He added that he’s not convinced that if he nominates someone else “that person would get a fair shake.”

Last month, the city’s Public Health and Safety Committee voted 3-1 against Nannis’ appointment. Nannis faced criticism from some aldermen who accused him of being too close to the Barrett administration.

Nannis, who previously served as the city’s health commissioner in the 1990s, has been awarded seven consulting contracts totaling nearly $515,000 through his firm, Strategic Healthcare Solutions, over the past decade.

The struggling health agency has been without a leader since Jan. 11, when Bevan Baker resigned amid news that his department failed to follow up and provide services to the families of thousands of children who had tested positive for lead — or at least failed to document those efforts.

Baker made slightly more than $150,000 a year.

The resolution to appoint McManus — a registered nurse with a doctorate in health studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — as interim health commissioner would require the support of 12 of 15 council members.

Records show that McManus’ nonprofit agency, founded in 1992, has experienced financial troubles in recent years.

In 2014, the Black Health Coalition lost a $750,000-a-year federal Healthy Start grant the agency used to reduce the racial and ethnic disparities in Milwaukee’s infant mortality rate. McManus’ group had first received funding through this program in 1998.

A spokesman for the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration,

which manages the Healthy Start program, said at the time that the agency had begun awarding grants through a competitive process and the Black Health Coalition “did not score highly enough to be funded.”

Barrett wrote a letter at the time praising the coalition’s work while calling the loss of funding a “significant setback” for the city.

The loss of that contract had an impact on the Milwaukee agency’s overall budget and McManus’ salary.

In 2014, the Black Health Coalition reported receiving $1.1 million in contributions and grants. McManus was paid $188,000 a year in income and “nontaxable benefits.”

But financial support had declined to $678,000 in 2015 and $373,000 the next year. McManus was listed as being paid $90,239 in salary and “other income” in 2016.

McManus’ daughter Denelle was paid $32,000 by the Black Health Coalition in 2016 — up from $24,000 the previous year.

The Black Health Coalition reported total investment income of $369 in 2016, the last year for which its financials are available. It also held a fundraising walk that year but lost more than $7,000 on the event. The walk also lost money in the two previous years.

Steven Mahan, director of the Community Development Grants Administration for the City of Milwaukee, said McManus’ group has received block grant funding in three of the previous four years. But Mahan said the coalition did not apply for any grants for this year.

One reason for that, Mahan speculated, may be that the Black Health Coalition hadn’t spent all the money from its 2017 grant. That grant, which came from the Black Male Advisory Council, paid $75,000 to provide “trauma-informed care” for individuals in certain ZIP codes in Milwaukee.

In the past, Mahan said the city comptroller has disallowed a few expenditures by the coalition for items such as miscalculation of fringe benefits. But he called those “minor issues.”

“It’s routine,” Mahan said.

Brenda Coley, co-executive director of Milwaukee Water Commons, praised McManus and said she backed her nomination.

“She has been running a public health agency in the city for as long as I’ve known her,” Coley said. “She has a wealth of experience and I think she brings an attitude of looking at issues from a public health perspective — not just the disease, but its effect on people.”

Coley added that what the Health Department needs most is “someone who has the ability to be an independent voice.”