County Dismisses Health Director

DAYTON - Columbia County Commissioners fired Public Health Director Da­vid Riggs last week in an ef­fort to fix a budgetary crisis in the department that's been escalating since the spring. In March, one of the county's half dozen pub­lic health employees was "stricken ill and has yet to return to work," according to Commissioner Chuck Reeves.

The department's budget took several hard hits with this loss - first when the employee tapped into a sick-leave bank, then when the county hired a replacement and finally when the depart­ment

discovered it wouldn't be reimbursed for any work completed by this new em­ployee,

as had been the case when the original staff per­son had done the work.

"In essence, we were pay­ing the salary three times," Reeves said during an in­terview with the Times on Monday. This was unacceptable within such a small depart­ment, in a county already strapped for funds, Reeves said.

"And the director of the department was not forth­coming with a lot of solu­tions," he said. "So we (the commissioners) were left to our own devises to come up with a solution, and we did." Reeves, with the approval of his colleagues on the board, dismissed Riggs fol­Budget lowing the commissioners meeting last Monday, Sept. 27. The decision came after speaking with the former director at the previous com­missioners meeting, on Sept. 20, during which county leaders were dissatisfied with Riggs' ability to solve the budget shortfall.

Reeves declined to dis­cuss any other factors which may have influenced his decision, saying that Wash­ington

is an "at-will state, which means we don't have to give reasons to terminate someone."

"If reasons were given," he said, "they would open the decision up for chal­lenge." The county hired Riggs a year ago, but the former director continued living in Vancouver, Wash., right up until his termination, Reeves said.

Now the county will reac­tivate a contract signed with Walla Walla County about a year prior to hiring Riggs, according to Reeves. "And commissioners and senior staff will have to as­sume more responsibility," he said. "Obviously this is not a long-term solution, but they've indicated they're willing to step up."

And it's not quite enough to end the matter. The public health department needs to compensate for about $20,000 lost, and Reeves said the county "may have to find some other money besides." Operating the department without a director will take some extra work, but it's not something new for Colum­bia County. Reeves said that prior to Riggs the director position was vacant for at least a decade.

"The change will be pret­ty seamless," he said. "We're basically just back to the way we were doing it before."