Point Reyes Light - December 16, 1999
Supes dismiss "whistleblower's" complaint
In a bizarre piece of theater, county supervisors this week unanimously dismissed a claim by Ed Stewart, chief of Marin County Environmental Health Services, that his immediate boss, director Alex Hinds of the Community Development Agency, endangered public safety by switching the duties of two health inspectors.
Both Stewart and health inspector Dave Mesagno, a septic system specialist with 16 years experience in the department's Land Use and Solid Waste section, had been placed on paid administrative leave after protesting Mesagno's transfer to the Consumer Protection section, which is responsible for restaurant kitchen inspections.
County officials have refused to explain why the men were transferred or placed on administrative leave (Stewart has maintained that the complaint against him has been couched as "gender discrimination.")
But officials have denied there's any political motive behind the decision. Predictably, that has left most everyone believing that:
Politics are precisely what's behind it, or
Stewart does indeed have a gender-discrimination complaint lodged against him, or
Newcomer Hinds simply shuffled his staff to his own liking, a typical enough practice for new administrators.
But in an unprecedented, nearly three-hour public hearing before supervisors on Tuesday, Stewart argued that Hinds' May 10 decision to switch Mesagno with another inspector without first discussing the move amounted to "gross mismanagement" and endangered public health and safety in Marin County.
"It's tantamount to asking two doctors, one a pediatrician and one a heart doctor, to switch positions," said Stewart, who suggested in his testimony that the personnel move was indicative of a prevailing "ambivalence" at Civic Center over enforcing building and septic system codes.
Tuesday's standing-room-only crowd included a wide range of West Marin activists, many of them hoping - some with video-cameras rolling - that Stewart would offer up tales of scandal at top county levels.
As it was, he said an oyster farm, two Tomales Bay dairies, Lagunitas School District, Skywalker Ranch and "hundreds of [West Marin] B & B's" were operating with either questionable permits or septic systems - all marks of the county's arbitrary enforcement of septic regulations.
Stewart's appearance before supervisors was the first time under the county's 11-year-old "whistleblower" rule that a disgruntled county employee has disputed the findings of the county administrator, who under the code is the first one to investigate in-house complaints of "gross mismanagement" or other improprieties by public officials.
The county administrator's office exonerated Hinds' decision to switch the two health inspectors in a Sept. 30 report, which was issued after four hours of interviews with Stewart and then discussion of Stewart's allegations with five other county employees and one independent septic engineer.
Among the specific allegations dismissed by the report is Stewart's claim that director Hinds endangered public health by allowing the Bolinas Public Utilities District to irrigate Mesa Park with water from a well that had been approved by state officials but not county health inspectors.
The well was ordered shut down by county Environmental Health Services shortly after it failed a periodic water quality test on July 13.
At Tuesday's hearing, Stewart claimed that Supervisor Steve Kinsey encouraged Hinds initially to let BPUD use the well over objections from staff of Environmental Health Services.
Kinsey denies taking any action that jeopardized public health, and he insisted on Tuesday that he never spoke to Hinds about members of Hinds' staff or any of Hinds' personnel decisions.
As for the Bolinas irrigation, Jack Siedman, a member of both the BPUD and Mesa Park boards of directors, said Tuesday that, in fact, Environmental Health Services stonewalled his efforts to use the BPUD well to irrigate Mesa Park, even though state regulators approved the well over 25 years ago and tests showed good water quality.
"If we can't use a well because we didn't get a [county] permit in 1972, then the issue is not public health," Siedman said. "It's something else."
When one audience member told supervisors that both Mesagno and Stewart had enjoyed unblemished records during a combined 43 years at their jobs, a number of guffaws erupted from the crowd.
But most of the audience, including Tomales Bay Advisory Committee chairman Richard Plant, Point Reyes Station retiree Frank Cerda, and several San Geronimo Valley residents opposed to alternative waste treatment systems, supported Stewart's claim that Hinds has damaged the county's credibility by taking qualified health officers away from their area of expertise.
"An injury to one is an injury to all," said Cerda, who also seized the opportunity to praise the board's recent resolution condemning the Mitsubishi Corporation's plans to build a desalinization plant in Mexico.
Urging greater county diligence in protecting Tomales Bay, Plant asked why no one from the county ever visits Inverness to inspect his septic system, then quickly retracted that statement.
Others, like Forest Knolls contractor Mark Warner and Tomales Bay Association president Ken Fox, asked for full disclosure of the motives behind the personnel moves.
"I don't think anybody in the public knows what those motivations are," Fox said. "I would [just] like to see the environment of Tomales Bay protected."
However, nothing in Tuesday's testimony was enough to sway supervisors from supporting the administrator's report. Assistant county administrator John Sweeten told supervisors that he could find no other staff member claiming that public health was threatened by the job reassignment.
"I don't find from investigating the facts that the action was gross mismanagement or endangered the public health," he said.
Before casting their votes, supervisors John Kress and Hal Brown noted that their work almost never brought them in contact with Stewart or Mesagno before the two men were placed on leave.
However, Brown conceded to Stewart that the public hearing did little to put his grievances to rest. "What the problem comes down to - as you have said, Ed - is it needs a lot more investigation," Brown said.