‘Significant’ raises preceded layoffs at Health Department
In the years before layoffs crippled its ability to serve the public, the Oklahoma Health Department gave almost 100 employees “significant” pay raises of more than $10,000.
Two employees saw their salaries jump more than $40,000 a year, records show. Seventeen saw their salaries jump more than $30,100.
Attorney General Mike Hunter on Friday called for the raises to be reviewed and possibly rescinded.
“There’s a new management team in place,” the AG said. “And this is one of the many things that is incumbent upon them to carefully review and determine if those decisions were consistent with the mission of the Department of Health.”
He suggested the raises at best were unjustified and at worst inconceivable.
A state multicounty grand jury heard testimony about the raises during its six-month investigation of the financial problems at the Health Department.
On Thursday, grand jurors reported the Health Department actually was never insolvent and that layoffs in December and March shouldn’t have happened.
“The financial crisis presented to the Legislature and to the public simply did not exist,” grand jurors stated in a 32-page formal report.
“The unnecessary and ineffective termination of 198 Oklahomans stands in marked contrast to the 94 significant pay raises that occurred from July 1, 2010, to September 30, 2017,” grand jurors also stated.
Some of the laid-off employees are considering suing, The Oklahoman has learned.
The new interim health commissioner, Tom Bates, apologized Friday to the laid-off workers and their families even though he was not at the agency when they were let go.
“I am truly sorry,” Bates said. “We have instituted a process to recall to employment numerous employees separated by the Reduction in Force ... to meet critical staffing needs in county health departments.”
An audit team working for State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones specifically looked for significant pay raises during an investigative audit of the Health Department.
Auditors discovered that 14 of the significant raises went to employees in Health Commissioner Terry Cline’s office.
Cline and the senior deputy commissioner, Julie Cox-Kain, resigned abruptly Oct. 30 because of the financial issues. Cline testified before the grand jury on Tuesday. Cox-Kain refused.
“The Commissioner admitted he approved these pay raises,” grand jurors reported.
The grand jurors and the state auditor reported Cox-Kain got a $20,500 annual raise without proper approval. The salary bump came when the Board of Health in 2014 approved a new organizational chart creating the senior deputy commissioner position.
Cline told the board CoxKain would receive “a slight increase in pay,” according to minutes of the board meeting.
The grand jury report is meeting with some criticism because no one was indicted. Grand jurors explained no money was embezzled and no current laws made the misconduct they found a crime.
That misconduct included creation of a slush fund to hide money from the Legislature, grand jurors found.
“If there was criminal activity here, we’d be prosecuting it,” Hunter said Thursday at a news conference.
“And we can all be mad,” said Hunter,
whose assistants advised the grand jury. “We can be outraged, which I certainly am. But, at the end of the day, we couldn’t find anything that we could prosecute.”
A political opponent, Gentner Drummond, said Thursday, “The staggering mismanagement of our tax dollars is appalling. The fact that no one will be held accountable is injustice.”
Drummond is running for attorney general against Hunter, who was appointed to the position last year. Both are Republicans.