Washington County’s Commissioner candidates differ on need for human services director
Barbara S. Miller/Observer-Reporter
Assistant Director Hannah McNerney adjusts the dry-erase board on which the Washington County elections office has maintained a countdown to the Nov. 5 general election.
Harlan Shober
Larry Maggi
Nick Sherman
Diana Irey Vaughn
Commissioners are in charge of the jail, county parks, 145 bridges, public safety and the 911 emergency call center, property assessment and a host of human services that aid veterans, the aged, children and youth and those with behavioral and mental problems.
Until late 2017, the commissioners were also responsible for a nursing and rehabilitation home, Washington County Health Center, located in Arden. Washington was one of the few remaining counties in Pennsylvania to operate such a facility, and it was sold to a private corporation, Premier Healthcare Management of Philadelphia, for $27.85 million.
At that time, the county’s human services director, who was also the health center administrator, resigned from county government to take an administrative position with Premier. The Washington County human services director position was not eliminated, but it remains unfilled.
Whether this is the proper course to follow has become an election-year issue among the commissioner candidates. In 2010, before the position merged human services director and health center administrator or assistant administrator, it carried a salary of $75,352, plus benefits.
If the same person had remained in that role and had not assumed responsibilities at the health center, the position would be paying $98,318 this year, according to a calculation of the county’s cost-of-living raises.
After the sale of the health center, the county advertised the human services director’s opening and set up interviews, but the process never reached the hiring stage. Diana Irey Vaughan, an incumbent, said she was in favor of filling the position, but she lacked a second vote in favor to bring it to the county salary board.
Nick Sherman, the other Republican nominee in this year’s election, is in favor of filling the vacancy, but Larry Maggi and Harlan Shober, Democratic incumbents, are not.
Sherman framed the issue within the context of the opioid epidemic.
“When we are in the middle of a crisis, to get rid of a director that’s solely responsible for this was just one of the worst things we could have done,” Sherman said in a recent interview.
“When they said they didn’t like the way it was working out, then you go back to the table and you revisit what a human services director does.
“When (Irey Vaughan) and I speak, our No. 1 priority is getting human services back in order.”
Sherman, citing the opioid epidemic and his 16 years of working with human services, explained that, “I would do everything different” than how county officials are handling the matter.
“Washington Drug and Alcohol (Commission) has taken the reins for this and they are doing a lot of the work that the private sector job should be doing.
“I see this as a single point of entry, single point of exit where you’re monitoring and (the human services director is) overseeing the drug and alcohol commission, they’re overseeing the district attorney’s office and they’re overseeing probation.”
Sherman said he also wants similar monitoring to be done with those charged with crimes related to domestic violence and make data public regarding outcomes, such as those who have successfully completed court-ordered treatment.
Irey Vaughan said she’s also interested in seeing mandated tracking of outcomes for human service programs.
“That’s critical when the need for human services continues to grow,” she said, hoping to identify problems that affect both an individual and the person’s family.
Irey Vaughan said she not only wants the county to focus on, for example, the person with a substance abuse disorder, but whether there is a child or an aging parent in the home.
In the absence of a human services director, Irey Vaughan said she started a human services task force which developed a Washington County human services app for smart phones.
Should she be re-elected, regardless of who else is chosen in the Tuesday election, Irey Vaughan said she’ll bring up the filling of the human services director’s position when she has a second vote.
“Are we saving money by not having someone in that position, someone coordinating services?” she asked. “Perhaps you can eliminate intake in every single department.”
Both Irey Vaughan and Shober said they want to see the counties’ agencies use an integrated computer system.
Shober said not filling the human services director’s position is part of his responsibility to keep costs down, but that the county is looking at information technology solutions to “make sure we can work together to treat the whole situation.
“I have very good directors in each of the departments,” he added. “Tim Kimmel as human services director was also in charge of the health center. Directors came to him when there was an issue between the departments. We saved money instead of paying two salaries.”
He said Jason Bercini, fiscal manager for Washington County human services, is someone who “has opened a better dialogue among our directors.”
Shober noted that the board of commissioners decided unanimously to file suit against pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors, attempting to recover damages related to the cost of battling the opioid epidemic.
The county had 27.6 drug-related arrests per 100,000 residents in 2006, a number that exploded 1,430 percent by 2014, putting “financial strain on every aspect of the county criminal justice system,” according to the suit.
In 2015, Washington County’s rate of 35.05 fatal drug overdoses per 100,000 people placed it among the top 10 in the state, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
County solicitor J. Lynn DeHaven said last week Washington County has also filed a claim against Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
“We are still actually doing a lot of things with the human services side of it,” Shober said. “With re-entry programs, we’re funding the district attorney with the law enforcement side. We’re trying to treat people rather than incarcerate only.”
Maggi said he views the human services director’s position as “just another layer of bureaucracy that didn’t work. Somebody could make $100,000 a year plus benefits, nothing against the people who applied.”
Two of the components that were under the umbrella of human services, the health center and Child Care Information Services – relocated by the state to Greensburg – are gone.
“It was kind of political appointees for a lot of years, and that was my opinion,” Maggi said.
Maggi graduated from the State Police Academy in 1973, a few years after President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs. When he was working in law enforcement, he arrested people for drug dealing and possession, and worked in the vice unit, said he has seen the ravages of drugs over the decades and reached the conclusion that “we can’t arrest our way out of it. It’s a society problem and society has got to change it. It’s a long process, it’s a very difficult process.
“We are trying new programs that come out. Most crimes are drug-related, and we try to sort out the addicts, try to get them the help they need right away.”
All three commissioners are running for re-election, so Sherman will have to unseat one of them to be elected to the board.
Irey Vaughan is seeking her seventh term, which makes her a modern-day record holder among Washington County commissioners, while Maggi is running for a fifth term and Shober is making a bid for a third.
Those casting ballots have the opportunity to vote for no more than two candidates, with the three top vote-getters taking oaths of office in early January to ensure minority-party representation on the board.
Washington County Commissioner Bio Box
Term: Four years
Base salary: $93,944
Democrats
Name: Larry Maggi
Age: 69
Residence: Buffalo Township
Education: Bachelor’s degree, California University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State Police Academy
Occupation: County commissioner
Name: Harlan Shober
Age: 74
Residence: Chartiers Township
Education: Attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Occupation: County commissioner
Republicans
Name: Diana Irey Vaughan
Age: 57
Residence: Nottingham Township
Education: West Virginia Business College
Occupation: County commissioner
Name: Nick Sherman
Age: 40
Residence: North Strabane Township
Education: Bachelor’s degree, Clarion University
Occupation: Executive vice president, Domestic Outreach Corp.