Goodbyes are getting more and more frequent at the
Montana Department of Environmental Quality.
When
attorney Ashley Olivero resigned from the agency at the end of
March, describing a “museum of degradations inflicted upon the rank
and file DEQ employees,” she joined seven other staffers who have
angrily quit since the agency was formed three years
ago.
The Montana state Legislature created the
Department of Environmental Quality three years ago by pulling
staff from three other agencies. Legislators hoped to streamline
decision-making by putting DEQ in charge of enforcing Montana’s
environmental laws. But critics both inside and outside DEQ say the
director and deputy director of the agency, appointed by Gov. Mark
Racicot, have been soft on industry and inconsistent in their
enforcement policies.
“It’s lousy management,”
says Cathy Seigner, former communications manager for the DEQ, who
quit with a fiery resignation letter in November (HCN, 12/22/97).
“There’s a lack of political will to do what they’re supposed to
do. There’s another agenda out there that’s been determined by the
governor.”
Seigner’s public resignation prompted
a two-month investigation by Racicot, who dismissed Seigner’s
charges as “unfounded.” DEQ administrators maintain that turnover
within the agency is not above normal.
But in
March, a four-page letter summarizing the work of a consultant who
had studied the DEQ was unintentionally handed out at a public
meeting and reported in the Helena, Mont., Independent Record.
“There appears to be a debilitating syndrome of anger, mistrust,
(and) sadness,” wrote consultant Jennifer Elison, who worked with
agency staffers for five months. “Without fail, every single work
group that I have interacted with thus far at the DEQ has spoken of
distrusting management.”
Former employees
believe the resignations will continue. “The political machinery
that decided to make the agency more friendly to industry didn’t
realize the people in the agency had deep commitments,” says Kevin
Keenan, former head of water quality enforcement, who left the
agency in May 1996 after 24 years with the state. “That’s why DEQ
is in a meltdown. They didn’t count on the fact that we would
refuse this manipulation.”
* Michelle
Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline ‘Meltdown’ continues at state agency.
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