Barrett: City has turned corner on lead crisis

Work still to be done; phone, vacancy troubles

Milwaukee has made significant progress addressing the city’s lead crisis, Mayor Tom Barrett and Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik said Friday.

The families of children with lead poisoning are again receiving appropriate follow-up services from the Milwaukee Health Department, they said.

“I want the families in Milwaukee to know that they can now have a high level of confidence if their child has elevated blood levels because the systems are now in place within the program to ensure that their child will get the services they need,” Barrett said during a Friday news conference.

Kowalik added that her agency would no longer be “the weak link.”

“But it’s a new day,” Kowalik said. “We will not be that weak link. We will lead.”

But at a City Hall meeting later that day, it became immediately clear that a

lot of work still needs to be done to repair the beleaguered agency.

For example, there are now 11 vacancies in the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. That program currently has 517 open cases involving children with elevated blood lead levels. And the agency’s phone system had not been set up properly, preventing callers from reaching the appropriate people, Kowalik said.

“Apparently Commissioner Baker was not a fan of the phone tree,” Kowalik said.

“He didn’t like phones?” Ald. Robert Bauman asked.

Kowalik also acknowledged that on Oct. 3, the Health Department received a subpoena from the Milwaukee County District Attorney office linked to a criminal investigation involving the agency.

The latest revelations come about 10 months after problems at the department burst into public view when former Health Commissioner Bevan Baker abruptly resigned in January.

Baker was ousted amid news of severe problems with its program aimed at preventing lead poisoning among Milwaukee children, including that city staffers had failed to follow-up with the families of leadpoisoned children — or at least failed to document those efforts.

The health agency has since faced city personnel investigations as well as state and federal probes into the failings of its lead program. The criminal investigation appears to be separate from those probes.

Barrett declined on Friday to comment on the criminal investigation.

He and Kowalik, who took over the agency from Interim Health Commissioner Patricia McManus about 10 weeks ago, instead tried to focus Friday on progress that’s been made in recent weeks.

More than 20,000 children tested

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 30, 22,744 Milwaukee children were tested for lead poisoning, they said. The families of children with a lead level of 5 micrograms per deciliter or more have been contacted, he said.

Of those children test in 2018, 941 were found to have elevated blood lead levels, city officials said. They also found 102 addresses linked to 93 lead-poisoned children that need environmental investigations, officials added.

City officials are also trying to work with the owners of 112 properties associated with lead-poisoned children that the Health Department previously failed to refer for environmental work between 2015 to 2017, officials said.

“We’ve turned the page,” Barrett said. Officials said they hope a “stop work order” issued by federal officials will soon be lifted.

That stop work order came down from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in February. Officials at the agency called on the city to immediately cease work funded by its Lead Hazard Reduction grant, citing numerous problems with the program.

“The department has cleared almost every hurdle toward removing the HUD stop work order,” Barrett said.

The department said it hopes to submit any remaining information to HUD within two weeks.

Mayor says lead paint is chief problem

Barrett and city health officials again doubled down on the main cause of leadpoisoning in Milwaukee children.

“Lead paint is the top source of lead poisoning in kids,” Barrett said.

He added that the city is working to remove all sources of lead poisoning, including paint, water pipes and lead dust.

Barrett also called on city residents and homeowners to work with city officials to combat lead poisoning. Of the 112 homeowners contacted about lead-poisoned children, there are 80 that have yet to follow up, officials said.

“Some of those properties are not letting us in,” said Sarah Zarate, a top city health official.

Only four of those 112 properties have been abated, and 20 are in the risk assessment stage.

“We need them to get back to the Health Department as soon as possible,” Barrett said. “We need the landlords, we need the residents to follow up.”

Absentee landlords are part of the problem, Zarate said.