County settles with former health department workers

A move most Kane County Board members believed to be in the best interests of the health of the county at the end of 2010 will now also take a healthy bite of taxpayer dollars in 2012. On Tuesday, board members reached a six-figure settlement with the 45 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union who lost their jobs when officials cut the county’s health department in half.

The downsizing of the health department was a controversial issue in the county for much of 2010. Ongoing problems with receiving state payments for programs that provided local residents a gateway to Medicaid, help with pregnancies and health care for foster children ultimately convinced board members to turn those programs over to private vendors. A total of 62 employees lost their jobs. Gerald Jones, the county board member who led the push to downsize the department, lost his re-election bid shortly thereafter.

Since then, Kane County Health Department officials have consistently reported no loss of service to residents in the programs the county formerly ran.

“There were a lot of dire predictions by some people at the time, none of which have come true,” said Paul Kuehnert, executive director of the health department. “We’ve actually had good health results since then.”

AFSCME 31 filed an unfair labor practices claim after the layoffs on behalf of its members. Part of the argument was about the timing of the layoffs. AFSCME 31 representatives maintained the layoffs should not have occurred until three weeks after the date employees were actually let go. The settlement resolves both that issue and the rest of the claim. The 45 employees will each get roughly three weeks of pay, a $500 lump sum and an additional payout reflecting the value of the short term sick day accrual benefits for those three weeks. The former employees will also maintain the right to have a first shot at filling any health department vacancies that come up in the next three years, and keep all their remaining unemployment benefits. The total cost to taxpayers for the settlement comes to about $117,000, Kuehnert said.

What county officials get is closure to the matter with no admission that any mistakes were made in the decision.

“I think that’s a really important piece of this,” Kuehnert said. “Just because we settled on an agreement like this we are not saying that we were wrong on anything. We’re just reaching an agreement so we’re not spending any taxpayer dollars on litigation.”

AFSCME 31 Spokeswoman Carla Williams said the deal was a longtime coming for union members, but it was a fair settlement for both sides. However, current county health department employees in the AFSCME 31 union still have some unfinished business with county officials. The union is currently in pay scale arbitration with the county for those employees. The settlement does not impact those discussions.