Do you think these Health and Welfare positions should be reinstated?

By Sean Ellis

sellis@journalnet.com

    POCATELLO — The former regional director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare will file a complaint against the department Thursday that seeks to ensure  important decisions can be made at the local level by people who understand the community.

    In June, Health and Welfare eliminated the regional director positions in regions 6 and 7 (Southeast Idaho and the Idaho Falls area), and the director of Region 5 (Twin Falls area) assumed coverage of all three regions. In addition, one regional director now oversees regions 1 and 2, and one director heads regions 3 and 4.

    The complaint by Nick Arambarri seeks reinstatement of the regional director positions that were eliminated, as well as the re-establishment of the seven health and welfare regions as administrative units with local authority, “as was originally intended by Idaho law.”

    Arambarri, who was the Region 6 director for 19 years, said it’s important for individuals and organizations within a community to expect that their issues will be addressed by a regional director who has the authority to make local decisions.

    With the elimination of the regional director positions, he added, that’s no longer the case.

    “I think the community expects when they go to see the regional director, they have some authority,” Arambarri said. “You need somebody who can relate to the community and who has the authority within the department to bring programs and resources together.”

    For example, he said, when county commissioners need somebody from the department to make an important decision, such as the allocation of resources, “that should be the regional director.”

    When a local judge has concerns with Health and Welfare on shared issues, he added, “they should have access to a person locally who has authority.”

    State Health and Welfare officials would not comment for this article, citing the possibility of pending legal action.

    Arambarri said he has the support of the steering committee for Health and Welfare’s regional advisory committee on substance abuse.

    Arambarri will hold a press conference Thursday to discuss the complaint, which follows another civil complaint he filed last year. The 10 a.m. press conference will be held in the Holiday Inn’s Jasper Room.

    Idaho’s Health and Welfare department is divided into eight divisions — including Medicaid, Family and Community Services, Behavioral Health, Welfare, and Public Health — and is a safety net for Idaho’s most vulnerable citizens. The department’s programs provide the basics of food, health care, job training and cash assistance to help families get back on their feet.

    The total budget for the department in fiscal 2010 is more than $2 billion. About $462 million of that is funded by the state, with the rest coming from the federal government.

    Arambarri said the regional directors actually haven’t had any local authority for several years now because of a previous state decision to have program managers and staff report to their divisions in the department’s central office in Boise rather than to the regional directors.

    So even the Twin Falls regional director, Arambarri said, has no administrative authority.

    He said that decision ran contrary to the original intent of the law that created the  Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in 1974. He said the intent was to decentralize power from the Boise office and place it in local regions with regional administrative units.

    He said according to that law, regional authority should have remained with the various administrative units that were created.

    “That law is still there,” he said, referring to Idaho Code 56-1002.

    The code states that, in order to provide more effective and economical access to the state’s health and social services, the governor is authorized to establish administrative regions headed by a regional director.

    “In the designation of these regions, specific consideration shall be given to the geographic and economic convenience of the citizens included therein,” it adds.