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Kathleen Kearney has faced endless criticism at the child welfare agency, the latest after a newspaper tracked down nine children listed as missing.
By STEVE BOUSQUET and ALISA ULFERTS
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 14, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday quickly accepted Kathleen Kearney's resignation as head of Florida's beleaguered child welfare agency as persistent reports of the department's failings threatened to cloud his re-election campaign.
Since April, when the still-unsolved disappearance of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson of Miami became a national embarrassment, Bush has gamely defended Kearney, one of his first appointments as governor.
But a drumbeat of reports of missing children or children left in abusive homes with deadly results undermined Kearney's hold on the job.
Prominent Democrats, including Janet Reno, the party's leading candidate for governor, called for Kearney's resignation months ago.
When asked about Kearney's future Tuesday, Bush tried to change the subject.
"I think that's just speculation," the governor said. "What else?"
Within two hours, Kearney had resigned.
"After much reflection and prayer, I have decided to tender to you my resignation," Kearney wrote in a letter to Bush listing numerous accomplishments. "This job, often referred to as the toughest in state government, has been the most rewarding and challenging of a lifetime."
Kearney gave no reason for her resignation.
Bush praised Kearney's "passionate devotion" to vulnerable children and said "all Floridians owe her a debt of gratitude for her public service."
The last straw might have been a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Sunday in which the newspaper easily tracked down nine South Florida children who had been listed as missing by Kearney's agency, some for as long as eight years.
"That troubles me a lot," Bush said Monday. "It suggests we need a new approach."
The new approach now includes a new leader for a sprawling bureaucracy with 24,000 employees and a $3.6-billion budget, responsible for keeping foster children in homes, protecting children from abuse and neglect and offering care to people with developmental disabilities.
No successor was named Tuesday, another indication of how quickly the decision was reached. Kearney's resignation takes effect Sept. 3. Bush promised to quickly find a replacement.
Republican state Rep. Sandy Murman of Tampa, who heads a select committee overseeing Kearney's agency, said DCF needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up.
"You can have the revolving door as many times as you want, but nothing is going to change until we address the systemic issues," Murman said. Those include high case loads, low salaries and rampant staff turnover, she said.
Karen Gievers, a child advocate who has sued the agency on behalf of children, saw politics in Kearney's departure. "If the governor wanted her to stay, he wouldn't have accepted her resignation," Gievers said. "The governor had to do something that looked like action."
Gievers, who has been active in Democratic politics, said one problem is a "bureaucratic morass" caused by Bush's emphasis on turning agency operations over to private providers.
Reno called on Bush to hire "a tested, proven, experienced child welfare agency manager" and to give DCF the money to do the job right. "The agency is falling apart. It is his job to put it back together again," Reno said.
Democratic candidate Bill McBride said Bush promised to improve education and fix problems at DCF. "He hasn't done either one, but he's going to have to live with that record into the fall," McBride said. "The buck stops at his desk, and he's the one who's going to have to be held accountable."
Kearney, 47, was a Fort Lauderdale circuit judge handling child abuse cases when Bush appointed her secretary of DCF. As a candidate, Bush sat in her courtroom and marveled at her work ethic and determination to ensure children are protected.
"Top to bottom, our child welfare system is in dire straits. And top to bottom, it needs to be reformed," Bush wrote in a St. Petersburg Times guest column after visiting Kearney's court.
Kearney began her tenure by shaking up the bureaucracy with a series of high-level firings. She shifted foster care to nonprofit agencies in 12 counties and moved child abuse investigations to sheriffs in five counties, including Pinellas and Pasco. The agency developed the first automated system to track child abuse cases, and increased caseworkers' salaries to $30,000.
She supervised the closing of the G. Pierce Wood mental hospital in Arcadia and was forced to grapple with the unexpected demands of housing sexually violent predators under the Jimmy Ryce Act. The state pumped more money into foster care and child abuse prevention.
But none of it solved the department's deep-seated problems, and Rilya Wilson's unexplained disappearance marked the begining of the end for Kearney.
A familiar cycle had begun: a blue-ribbon report, stinging criticism from legislators, promises of reform, an exodus of caseworkers terrified of making a mistake and the death of another child in state care.
One legislator who oversees DCF's budget said that while many problems were not directly Kearney's fault, she was ultimately responsible.
"It was just time that she had to go," said Sen. Ron Silver, D-North Miami, chairman of a Senate budget subcommittee on human services. "After a time, you come to the realization that something else is going to happen tomorrow that you're going to get blamed for. But she's one of the most caring people I know. She cares about kids."
Silver said the next DCF secretary would inherit the same problems Kearney faced, but with one advantage. "A fresh start," Silver said. "At least the next person will have a grace period for a certain period of time."
Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, urged Kearney to use her new-found status of private citizen to press for for more resources for the department.
"She should be a whistleblower. She should demand that the Legislature shore up resources for the department," said Wilson, who called for Kearney's ouster months ago. "I invite her to join our cause."
Kearney seemed to sense the tenuous nature of her job even on the day she accepted it.
"I cannot and will not promise that children will not die. They will," she said then. "What I can promise is that there will be a better assessment process -- that it will be professional, that it will be competent, that it will be compassionate."
-- Times political editor Adam C. Smith and researchers Caryn Baird, Kitty Bennett and Deirdre Morrow contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press also was used.
An overview of Kathleen Kearney's tenure at the Department of Children and Families:
DEC. 7: Gov.-elect Jeb Bush chooses Kearney, a Broward circuit judge, as secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families. "We have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us," Kearney says.
FEB. 10: Five employees of the department are fired for failing to notice that 6-year-old Kayla McKean, beaten to death by her father, was being abused.
FEB. 12: A South Florida district administrator resigns under pressure from Kearney, who found crisis conditions in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.
MAY 26: Kearney announces a shakeup of the Central Florida district and a review of a huge backlog of cases, hoping to end a series of child abuse cases.
JULY 21: Kearney says Hillsborough County's system for investigating and preventing child abuse is in "crisis" and state workers are bogged down with high caseloads.
AUG. 31: Kearney unveils plans to hire 192 more child abuse investigators, an increase of almost 20 percent.
JUNE 14: Lawsuit accuses Kearney's agency of holding abused and neglected children hostage in emergency shelters and foster care months after they should have been returned home or adopted.
FEB. 22: Fighting to avoid a public relations disaster, Kearney criticizes a legislative report that says her agency failed to respond quickly enough to calls to the state's abuse hotline and "has generally not achieved its goal to ensure that abused and neglected children are provided safe, permanent and stable living arrangements in a timely manner."
MARCH 8: Amid mounting allegations of shoddy work and falsified records, the state cancels multimillion-dollar contracts with a Pinellas Park company it hired to investigate child abuse cases.
APRIL 24: DCF tells Miami police that Rilya Wilson, 5, of Miami has been missing for 15 months. She was supposed to be under state supervision. The caseworker and her supervisor resign.
MAY 26: A four-member review panel appointed by the governor recommends expanding background checks in foster homes, increasing court-appointed guardians and adding money to DCF programs.
JULY 12: A child abuse investigator is fired and becomes the first to be charged with a felony for falsifying records that claimed she visited the family of Alfredo Montez, 2, in Polk County on July 1. Authorities say that is the day the child was killed by man who had been babysitting.
JULY 26: A DCF counselor in Coral Gables is fired for allegedly driving drunk with a baby girl in her care riding in the back seat.
AUG. 11: The South Florida Sun-Sentinel finds nine children Kearney's department had declared missing.
AUG. 12: Bush calls for new methods to find missing foster children. "We can do a lot better than we have been doing," he said.
AUG. 13: Kearney resigns.