Do we need multiple health officers?

Kudos to newly elected county supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Glenn Mcgourty for questioning the idea of continuing to pay former county health officer Mimi Doohan $100,000 a year to consult with the county on COVID19 from her home in San Diego.

First of all, it’s a lot of money when we have a full time health officer making three times that much right here in the county. Mulheren made the good point that there are undoubtedly local physicians that could add to our COVID19 team if we feel we need more than one health officer on that task.

Other supervisors talked about needing “continuity” — in other words Doohan’s memory of the things she did. One could argue over the quality of Doohan’s time as health officer, but it seems that the county should surely know the decisions that were made at the time and why.

The county CEO says she would hire three public health officers to work on COVID if she could. It seems to us that if we need more action on COVID19 in the county, the CEO should come up with an action plan to submit to the supervisors on what exactly needs doing and what hires needs to be made to accomplish them and for what amount of money. Since the majority of supervisors voted to keep Doohan on the payroll, we hope than rather then continue to put her activities on the consent calendar, they will present to the public at every meeting, Doohan’s bills with a breakdown of each $125 per hour she earns and what she did to earn it. That should also serve to verify the claim from the CEO that Doohan is a bargain since she works many more hours than she bills.

Simply extending a contract with someone hundreds of miles away with another job to do seems lazy and wasteful.