Upcoming county health board appointments need public scrutiny

Commissioners, Kelly Lane should stop playing politics with public health and start addressing community's real health problems

Compared with other Washingtonians, people in Cowlitz County live shorter lives, suffer more often from depression and other mental illness, are alarmingly obese, give birth more often as teenagers, and in general live less healthy adult lives.

These are some of the problems that the Cowlitz County Board of Health should focus on — and why the public should watch closely next month when the Cowlitz County commissioners appoint three new members to the panel.

Combined with this fall’s election results, the appointments coild help steer the board away from the approach that has made it a laughingstock over the last two years or so.

The seven-member panel has has been preoccupied with the warped and ideologically driven views of Commissioners Arne Mortensen and Rick Dahl and health board chairman Kelly Lane, who continue to peddle false information about COVID and vaccines.

To quickly review the lowlights of this sorry history:

• Lane, Mortensen and Dahl pushed through a “medical freedom” resolution that — even in a watered down form— made erroneous assertions about COVID vaccines and deaths and was widely criticized as inaccurate by the local medical community. It passed with the support of board member Lindy Campbell, a retired Longview school district nurse who stepped down from the health board at the end of her term last month. 

• Mortensen resisted renewing the contract of the Health Department’s chief medical officer, claiming Steven Krager gave out biased information about COVID. The board finally rehired him when no one else applied for the position. What professional would want to work for these people? Whom do you believe, a medical doctor specializing in public health, or a politician like Mortensen, a libertarian/Republican who has a long-held hostility toward government?

*  On May 7, Lane asked representatives of Informed Choice Washington to give a presentation to the health board ironically called “How to regain trust in public health.”  Informed Choice dishes out conspiracy theories and outlandish assertions. They include: The  vast majority of about 1 million deaths attributed to COVID in the U.S. were misattributed; that discredited and potentially dangerous remedies such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin cured COVID, so there was no need for vaccines; and that COVID vaccines “were the most damaging medical product in history.” 

Believing these assertions requires accepting a conspiracy of gigantic proportions among many layers of government, the press, research institutions and pharmaceutical makers. Almost 700 million doses of COVID vaccines had been administered in the U.S as of early May.  Vaccine safety has been extensively studied by many reputable researchers and institutions.  The Johnson &  Johnson vaccine was discontinued for  safety reasons, but the others have been repeatedly been found to be safe, with only some low-risk connection to curable, heart-related inflammation, mostly in men. They have been shown to ease the severity of illness and reduce the odds of getting long-term COVID. (I’m getting my fifth or sixth jab this week or next.)

• Finally, Mortensen and Dahl ignored the law when appointing three non-elected citizen members to the health board last month. Their actions were sneaky and contrary to state law regulations that required them to adequately advertise the positions and solicit applicants.  It was a clear attempt to pack the board with like-minded people. One of them was Bill Youngren, a former Oregon nursing assistant who is an outspoken critic of official COVID-19 guidance and an advocate of ivermectin. It turns out that Youngren was not eligible for the appointment. (More on that below).   The commissioners also reappointed Lane and replaced appointee Mary Jane Melink — a foe of Mortensen, Dahl and Lane  — with Lorna Stuart, a rental property owner and former physical therapist.

Kudos to the Cowlitz County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for calling out the commissioners, invalidating the appointments and outlining a transparent legal process to move forward.

This history is all the more concerning — and cause for vigilance now — because commissioners Mortensen and Dahl have a played  politics with other county appointments.

In January, for example, they replaced Kalama City Administrator Adam Smee as the small city representative on the county Solid Waste Advisory Committee. Smee, a SWAC member for more than 10 years, had bucked Mortensen on more than one occasion, including opposing his effort to sell the county-owned Headquarters Landfill. Mayors Paul Helenberg of Castle Rock and Mike Reuter of Kalama begged Mortensen to retain Smee, but they appointed new Woodland Mayor Todd Dinehart, who didn’t seek the post or have the experience for it.

Smee “was a thorn in their side, and that’s why they got rid of him,” Reuter told me earlier this month. (Reuter is one of three candidates seeking election to replace Mortensen, who is retiring after two terms as a county commissioner.) Mortensen, whom I’ve often criticized in these pages, does not return my phone calls.

Also earlier this year, the commissioners reduced the county planning commission from nine to seven members. In the process, they did away with a 20-year veteran and appointed Tim Shay, an anti-tax ally of Mortensen and Dahl and member of Mortensen’s conservative 4-C group.   This was done in the name of improving efficiency, but it smacked of obvious of cronyism.

Competency and independence — not political favoritism — should be the basis for appointments to all government posts and jobs. This is why Donald Trump’s plan to replace federal civil service workers with loyalists if he is elected president in November is so concerning. Unfortunately, that type of Tammany Hall-style abuse of power already is taking place in Cowlitz County — and that’s why next month’s appointments of three new  health board members is so significant.

For two years at least, the health board as been piddling — not fiddling — while Cowlitz County is burning. According to the 2022 Washington State County Health Ranking report, published by the University of Wisconsin Health Institute, Cowlitz County ranks 30 out of 39 counties in the Health Outcome category, which includes premature death and percent of low-weight births.

The county ranked 28 out of 39 for such negative Health Factors as tobacco use, diet and exercise, alcohol and drug use, access to care, family and social support and air and water quality. “Health factors” reflect the physical and mental well-being of residents through measures representing the length and quality of life typically experienced in the community.

For the full Wisconsin report, see www.countyhealthrankings.org/sites/default/files/media/document/CHR2022_WA_0.pd. Another comprehensive statistical look a the health and fortunes of Cowlitz County can be found at a U.S. News website: www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/washington/cowlitz-county

It’s time the health board paid some attention to these matters.

The next few months present an opportunity to change direction. Mortensen and Commissioner Dennis Weber are not seeking re-election, so the commission will have a new majority. It’s important to flesh out where the nine candidates to replace them stand on these issues.

In the next month the existing commissioners will select three appointed members. So a big health board turnover is possible.

Under state law, the three elected county commissioners serve on the health board. They also appoint three non-elected members to two-year terms to represent one of three constituencies: health consumers, health providers and other “community stakeholders.” A fourth appointee represents the Cowlitz Indians and is chosen by the tribe.

Tribal representative Alyssa Fine recently stepped down and has not yet been replaced.  She, Melink and Commissioner Dennis Weber were the minority opposition in the majority’s controversial moves.

Ten applicants so far are seeking appointment to the three non-elected positions. Current appointees Melink ((community stakeholders representative)  and Kelly Lane (health consumers representative) are seeking reappointment.

Youngren, a retired CNA, also has reapplied, even though the prosecutor’s office has said he is not eligible under state law for the medical provider position he is applying for. His license is expired and, in any case, a CNA does not qualify for the position.

Lorna Stuart has reapplied for the community stakeholders position — the one now held by Melink.

Other applicants for the medical provider position (formerly held by Lindy Campbell) are:  P.J. Peterson, a retired Longview doctor, former medical director for PeaceHealth and a PeaceHealth Foundation board member;  Robert Buchman, retired environmental health inspector for the county health department; and Michael Grubb, a retired doctor who volunteers at the local free medical clinic.

Other applicants for the health care consumers position are Diane Cooper, retired CEO of the Family Health Center; Michael Phillips, a Kalama paramedic; and Claire Pang, a retired technical writer, member of the Longview Parks Board and critic of recent Longview City Council decisions.

The application period is open until Aug. 8.  Public interviews before the entire board of health are targeted for Aug. 12 and Aug. 20, though no official dates are set. After the interviews, the three county commissioners alone will select the three new appointed members.

Given the biases of the commissioners, it’s important for the public to step up pressure to make sure the best people are selected. It’s time to stop political cronyism and move on to the real health problems facing this community.