County manager’s wife hired to work for county health department

Last week I learned via Richard Moore that the word about Wentworth was that Mrs. Tom Robinson had been hired by the county. Fresh on the heels of the Mary Easley scandal and the exorbitant revelations of Maurice Green’s contract, that kind of caught my attention.

At the time, Richard Moore stated that he had heard rumors and was unable to get past the county’s new automated answering system to get details. Never being one to be satisfied with rumors, I decided to check it out myself.

Sure enough. I forwarded the information I gained to local media sources in the form of an anonymous tip. Since no one else has reported the details, here goes.

I first looked up Tom Robinson’s property record because I figured it would have his wife’s name on the deed. Carol A. Robinson was listed. So I called the county PIO and requested the available public information about county employee Carol A. Robinson. The officer stated I would need to talk to Health Director Glenn Martin because Robinson was a public health nurse. So I called Glenn Martin and he said he had in fact hired Carol A. Robinson and that she began working for the county on July 14.

I asked Martin for the details of her employment that were subject to public record and he referred me to personnel director John Dean.

I got a request in to Dean through the county attorney’s office because when I get the run around from county employees, I know the lawyers in Wentworth are professional enough to solve the problem.

Dean called me first thing Monday morning and informed me that Robinson was hired at an annual salary of $71,000 to be a Physician’s Extender II. Dean said the county management had considered the appearance of nepotism but decided to move forward with the hire because Robinson is a veteran medical practitioner and the county has had difficulty recruiting professional health care providers to the area. A physician’s extender II is the highest level of nurse practitioner and is a bridge between a nurse and a physician.

He stated further that since there was no direct reporting relationship between the county manager and a physician extender II in the Department of Public Health there was no conflict of interest at hand.

I looked up Robinson’s nurses license and she has indeed been a nurse since 1976, most recently for a practice in Summerfield.

A member of the board of commissioners explained to me in private that the board knew of the hire and approved it on the basis of Robinson’s experience and talent and that Glenn Martin is hired by the county health board and is not supervised by the county manager.

I guess I’m satisfied with that, but a couple of questions come to mind.

1. How does it save the county money to hire veteran practitioners who are all but retired from private practice and merit pay at the upper end of the pay scale? Didn’t the county just slash personnel and sheriff’s deputies in the budget enacted July 1?

2. Where there no internal applicants not married to the county manager who applied for the job and could have been hired and given the opportunity to grow their skills in a new position while saving the county $14,000?

3. If a county employee’s family member works for another agency and that first employee has influence over the budget for that agency, might there not still be a conflict of emotion, even if not interest?

4. In the interest of full disclosure, why has the local media not reported this? While there is nothing apparently wrong with the county manager’s household almost doubling its annual take of tax dollars, one would think that the public should at least be informed about it so that they might discuss the circumstances and decide if they too are satisfied with the situation.

Lastly, I hope not to irk too many people, namely the county manager who I think does a fine job.

However, there are far too many people in this county who rely on government employment as the primary source of income for their household.

I believe it has a clear political implication when one or both members of a household earn their wages from government. It makes them more likely to support government action without question and to politically support the continuance of the status quo.

Recently during the sales tax referendum a young man who works for a government agency said to me he was for the sales tax increase because his wife was a teacher. I said to him, well that doesn’t mean you should close your mind to other perspectives. He said, well no, but I want the tax increase so my wife will get a raise.

I explained to him the tax increase was for buildings not for teacher pay and he didn’t seem to care what it was for as long as it would benefit government and his family.

That seems to be a common strain in Rockingham County.