Mortensen again plays politics with public health

Cowlitz County commissioner leads effort to end services of health officer who guided area through COVID pandemic

On New Year’s Day, Cowlitz County may be without a public health officer because County Commissioner Arne Mortensen disliked the advice he was getting during the COVID pandemic.

The vacancy likely will be brief, but for a while at least birth certificates would be unsigned and no official would be in charge of responding to health emergencies such as food-borne sicknesses.  

However, the bigger issue here is how Mortensen has again politicized public health — this time by unjustly denigrating and firing a civil servant.

“To be honest, I thought our health officer was not as helpful as I had hoped for. I had asked for balanced information. We got zero balanced information,” Mortensen said at a Nov. 21 Cowlitz Board of Health meeting, speaking of contract Health Officer Dr. Steven Krager.

Following that comment, the health board, where Mortensen leads a four-vote majority, declined to renew a contract with Clark County under which Krager and Dr. Alan Melnick have been assigned to be Cowlitz health officers.

That contract offer was the only one on the table. No other provider responded to the health board’s request for qualifications (an RFQ is an official solicitation for services). So the county as it nows stands will have no health officer after Dec. 31, when the Clark contract expires.

Mortensen’s concerns may sound legit, but on closer scrutiny it’s apparent that he is again playing politics with public health. He did not respond to e-mailed questions.

No other board member publicly raised objections about Krager, and no formal complaints about his performance have been filed with Clark County.

Mortensen was not specific about his allegations at the Nov. 21 meeting.  However, he often has joined other conservatives in criticizing the recommendations of  the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as well as the efficacy and constitutionality of Gov. Jay Inslee’s masking, quarantining and vaccination mandates.  

Mortensen was a supporter of the controversial “Medical Freedom” resolution that the health board passed 4-3 on Nov. 21 despite the medical community’s objections to misstatements of fact.

Inslee’s closure and masking orders were unpopular in Cowlitz County, especially among libertarians and conservatives like Mortensen.

Krager and his supporters say he had no choice but to enforce and advocate for COVID orders and issue public health recommendations based on science. Krager acknowledged that Mortensen had shared “vague” concerns about his advice and work during the pandemic, but Krager sticks by his efforts.

“In general, I have always done my best to provide the most up-to-date recommendations based on the best available evidence as well as consensus within the public health community,” he said by email on Thursday.

He and Melnick said they do not have authority to weaken state health orders, although they can make them tougher.

It’s apparent that Mortensen just wanted Krager to confirm his own biases. His real beef is with Inslee and the CDC. He’s put Krager, an innocent public servant, in the noose in their place.  

I didn’t always agree with Krager’s handling of the pandemic. He could  have more aggressively revealed the sources of local COVID outbreaks. But he worked feverishly trying to keep the virus from spreading and killing people.

His job was to follow his scientific training and his own sense of professional ethics, not satisfy the biases of a highly partisan politician.

Other county health officers in the state and nation have been under alleged pressure to ease COVID restrictions. For example, Dr. Robert Lutz is suing the Spokane County Heath District for defamation and wrongful termination, alleging that he was politically pressured to ease COVID-19 restrictions.

In Michigan, a new conservative majority on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners has tried for a year to remove the county’s health officer, Adeline Hambley, over mask mandates, advocacy of COVID vaccines and testing attendees at a Gay Pride event for sexually transmitted diseases. Legal protections prevented the county from firing Hambley, so the commissioners offered her a $4 million buyout, withdrawing it after learning the county couldn’t afford it, according to The Washington Post.

The Post noted that the Michigan case is one case of hundreds around the nation where deep ideological divisions are disrupting the functioning of local government — as it is here in Cowlitz County.

Health officers sign birth certificates and are in charge of ensuring the  safety of public water systems, responding to the emergence of infectious diseases, enforcing nuisance and sanitation rules and overseeing the county’s general health. They must be licensed doctors and have degrees in public health or undergo training in that discipline.

Under Washington law, the state will appoint a temporary health officer while Cowlitz County sorts out the situation. But the county is losing nearly four decades of public health expertise by choosing not to renew the Clark County contract.

Melnick has periodically served as Cowlitz health officer since 1989, and Krager has five years under his belt, the last four in Cowlitz County. They also serve as health officers for Pacific, Wahkiakum and Skamania counties and have also served in that role for Lewis County.

“This is disappointing,” health board member Mary Jane Melink said. ”We’ve had two good health officers. They’ve kept us covered and legal and kept us safe, and now we (will be) without any at all.”

Health board chairman Kelly Lane, a Mortensen ally, did not return a call for comment.

What’s most important here is not the pending a gap in service, which likely will be brief. Rather, it’s another case of how dysfunctional and politicized county government has become under Mortensen’s influence.

At its Nov. 21 meeting, the health board voted to recommend that the county commissioners negotiate separately with Krager and other possible candidates for the job.

The whole motion was nonsensical in the first place: Why negotiate with Krager if you disliked his performance? 

And the motion turns out to be hollow in part, because, according to Krager, “Clark County Health has policies in place that would not allow me to contract on my own (with Cowlitz County) while full time.”

No new proposals have emerged. The health board has no regular meetings scheduled. And on Tuesday, Dec. 19, Krager and Melnick submitted resignations as health officers effective Dec. 31, citing concern that the county still might list them as its health officers after the contract with Clark Count expires.

What legitimate doctor would want to get immersed in such a politicized and convoluted situation?

This decision should have been a slam dunk. Krager and Melnick have done a good job and shouldn’t take the heat for regulations that ruffled Mortensen’s libertarian sensibilities. Instead, we’ve had gridlock and grandstanding like we see daily in Congress.

As I’ve written before, personal medical liberties are important and vital to a free society. They should not be abridged lightly. But they are not absolute or sacrosanct.

Individuals should not have unfettered license to spread disease to others in the name of freedom.  Kids have been required to be immunized against childhood diseases for decades. People with highly infectious diseases are quarantined under law. 

When to impose restrictions or health mandates is a legitimate question worthy of public debate. But undercutting and impugning the doctors who enforce the rules just undermines public health.