Staffer stalled cleanups of homes with poisoned kids
A top Milwaukee Health Department staffer scaled back efforts to clean up homes with lead-poisoned children living in them, newly released records say.
During the last two years — 2016 and 2017 — the city didn’t clean up a single house with lead-poisoned children living in it, the records also show.
Those were among the findings documented in hundreds of pages of records linked to personnel investigations into two former leaders of the city’s troubled lead poisoning prevention program. The documents were released by the city Friday following Journal Sentinel records requests.
The documents blame former health staffers Lisa Lien and Richard Gaeta for creating a toxic work environment full of bullying, intimidation and harassment. Following the personnel investigations, Lien resigned and Gaeta was fired.
Lien, then the city’s home environmental health manager, had previously gotten a 10-day suspension last year. Both Lien and Gaeta were placed on paid administrative leave in March.
Gaeta’s discharge notice accuses him of “insubordination” and “offensive conduct or language.” It also says he was “incompetent or inefficient” in doing his job as Milwaukee’s environmental field supervisor.
Without authorization, Gaeta imposed additional fines on contractors hired by the city to clean up lead hazards in homes, the notice says. His bosses say he
was “not being entirely honest” about the program, it adds.
Gaeta is fighting his firing, records show.
Lien has said that the department was facing severe staffing shortages, but was not mismanaged.
Bullying claim
Another city investigation conducted by the law firm Crivello Carlson found credible evidence that Lien “harassed, bullied and created a hostile work environment in general” while heading the lead program.
Four workers reported they had been intimidated and retaliated against by Lien. Several said they felt the need to seek counseling or therapy.
That investigation focused on Lien’s treatment of an unnamed nurse from West Africa, who claimed that Lien made fun of her because of her race, once threatened to “destroy” the nurse and accused the employee of providing a co-worker with “sexual favors.”
Jasmyne Baynard, the Crivello Carlson attorney who wrote the 30-page report, said she couldn’t corroborate those accusations.
But her report said Lien failed to give that nurse the training needed to do her job and treated her differently than others by, for instance, ordering her to follow strict lunch rules that ran counter to agency policy.
“Throughout my initial interview with (redacted), she was extremely emotional and began to cry when talking about her alleged negative treatment at the Health Department,” Baynard wrote. “She said she has been traumatized by the way Ms. Lien treated her.”
Lien denied all of the allegations in her interview with Baynard. Lien accused the nurse of being guilty of “insubordination.”
The city’s own investigation says Lien shifted the focus of the program away from cleaning up homes of lead-poisoned children.
“It is clear that by 2017, Ms. Lien reduced the resources dedicated to the investigation of (lead-poisoned kids’) units,” the report says. “However, it is difficult to understand why this was done.”
Cleaning up the homes of those children is a priority under state and federal guidelines.
“Clearly, the environmental investigation and abatement of addresses in which a child with an (elevated blood lead level) resides is not only required by statute,” the investigation reads. “But is based upon the research related to the fact that children who are lead poisoned should be removed from further hazards as a priority measure.”
The city failed to clean up any homes with leadpoisoned children living in them in 2016 and 2017. During that time, the number of citations for lead hazards issued by the city dropped from 93 in 2016 to none in 2017.
During the two previous years, 2014 and 2015, only two homes with poisoned children were cleaned up by the city each year, while 66 and 132 citations were issued, respectively.
That was a sharp decrease from 2013 when 13 homes with lead-poisoned children were cleaned up and 60 citations were issued by the city.
Lien is one of a handful of health staffers and former staffers who have faced discipline in recent months as the city reels from a crisis linked to its handling of programs aimed at preventing lead poisoning among Milwaukee children.
The crisis led to the resignation of former Health Commissioner Bevan Baker in January. Baker was expected to testify at City Hall Monday, but canceled late Friday, citing advice from his attorney.
Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton said the council “has not ruled out the use of its subpoena power” to compel Baker to testify.
The documents released Friday portray a department plagued by serious problems, in- cluding poisoned children being released from the hospital back into unsafe homes.
They also describe allegations of unfair treatment of contractors.
“Contractors stated that there was intimidation and harassment, that some contractors received preferential treatment, and that Mr. Gaeta would make up rules without any authority,” his four-page discharge notice reads.
Despite the complaints, Gaeta said he had a positive relationship with contractors.
Several staffers in the lead program said they were “traumatized” by his management style and avoided dealing with him.
“When asked for specific instances of problems with Mr. Gaeta, some employees expressed that they did not want to speak about him for fear of retaliation,” it said.
He again told investigators that he considered his relationship with staffers to be “friendly and cordial.”