The Health Department, located inside The Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building, has not yet located missing paperwork from the office of the Health Commissioner.
A recent investigation into missing paperwork from the Office of the Health Commissioner discovered that there were no lead program files held in the office of former Health Department Commissioner Bevan Baker. However, missing paperwork, including emails and correspondence, has been missing from the office since February—an enigma that the city has yet to solve.
This all comes as Interim Health Commissioner Patricia McManus said in a July Steering and Rules Committee meeting that her office was empty when she took over as commissioner. "There was nothing...not one piece of paper,” she told council members.
The missing paperwork was left in the office by Paul Nannis, a former Health Commissioner who was picked by Mayor Barrett to serve as the Interim Health Commissioner after former Commissioner Baker resigned from his office because of the Health Department’s mismanagement of children who tested positive for lead.
The Investigation
The investigation, performed by Maria Monteagudo of the Department of Employee Relations, said “The staff in the Commissioner’s Office is unclear as to what happened to those papers.” However, the report did say that at one time following Baker’s resignation, an administrative assistant found notes from what appeared to be a lead program meeting in the office.
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The investigation was completed on July 26, just one week after McManus appeared before the committee. It included interviews with Nannis, McManus and multiple office and administrative assistants. Nannis served as Interim Commissioner following the departure of former Commissioner Baker on January 11. Nannis said he attempted to organize large piles of material in Baker’s office from January 16-29. He then apparently left piles of information in the office for the next Commissioner to organize.
About a month after McManus took over as Commissioner, Nannis met with McManus to discuss her position. The report reads, “[McManus] never acknowledged whether she had seen the information or not, but more importantly she did not indicate being concerned about the ‘missing files.’”
An administrative assistant said that “none of the information was there” when she entered the office on February 1, nearly three weeks before Commissioner McManus began and just days after Nannis left his role on January 29. She apparently only found a note pad with a few papers relating to a lead program meeting.
Multiple other staff members said they did not enter the office between the time that Nannis left and McManus began her interim term on February 19. However, a health personnel officer did say that a temp employee indicated that she had packed up a few of former commissioner Baker’s personal belongings following Nannis’ departure.
The report finishes by saying, “Finally, it is important to recognize that allegations or findings related to missing Lead Program files are part of the personnel investigations anticipated to be completed by the end of July and will be addressed by the Commissioner accordingly.”
Interim Health Department Commissioner McManus was reached did not respond to a request for comment by the time this story was published.
FLAC Responds
Robert Miranda of FLAC believes more needs to be done by the city to find the missing paperwork.
Robert Miranda of the Freshwater for Life Action Coalition (FLAC) said the report is alarming to him. Miranda met with Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm last June to request an investigation into Milwaukee’s lead prevention program.
“The people involved in this matter are totally indifferent to the gravity of the crisis that we are under with the Health Department,” said Miranda. “Nothing in this investigation confirms if all removed documents are accounted for.”
Miranda is pushing for the Mayor and Aldermen to look further into the matter. “There needs to be a real hard effort to bring out the truth out and hold people accountable,” he added.
Monteagudo said that Lead Program files were never kept in the Commissioner’s Office. “The report was attempting to clarify that Commissioner McManus did not imply by her statement to the Steering and Rules Committee that Program files or medical records were ‘taken’ from the Commissioner’s Office,” she said.
Lead Prevention
A state report released in May found that Milwaukee’s lead prevention program had massive “program deficiencies.” A corrective action plan released in July by the Health Department is aiming to fix some of these deficiencies. One point of the plan states that the department should revise protocols for intervention levels for children with high blood levels.
Alderman Tony Zielinski said he would be speculating about what happened to the missing files, but he believes that the city should subpoena individuals to get to the bottom of the issue of the missing files. He also believes more education is vital to informing people about the dangers of lead.
“You need to get money out there and educate people because most people aren’t aware of what you need to do,” he said, mentioning a 2015 National Drinking Water Advisory Council recommendation that says it is essential to educate people about exposure to lead in the water. “There is no excuse for this.”
The City of Milwaukee does have a website dedicated to lead education titled “Lead-Safe Milwaukee,” however Zielinski and Miranda believe more needs to be done.
Council President Ashanti Hamilton, Chair of the Steering and Rules Committee, was also reached out to for this story. He did not respond before the story was published.
Related: Community Advocacy Group Calls for Investigation into Lead Prevention Program (Jun. 13, 2018)
