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Shakeup ousts 8 DCF officials
By CURTIS KRUEGER and MIKE BRASSFIELD Eight top officials were ousted Tuesday from the Department of Children and Families, the latest in a series of shakeups at the state's beleaguered child welfare agency. DCF's second in command, Deputy Secretary Bob Cohen, was forced out, along with two other Tallahassee officials and five regional administrators in Orlando, West Palm Beach and Lakeland. In two of those places, the agency has recently had scandals involving children who were killed under DCF's watch. Gov. Jeb Bush had asked for the resignations of all the agency's top staffers as he prepares the transition into his second term. Eight of those resignations were accepted Tuesday by DCF Secretary Jerry Regier, who took control of the troubled agency in August as criticism mounted over the case of Rilya Wilson. She was the 5-year-old Miami girl whose disappearance from foster care went unnoticed by DCF caseworkers for 15 months. Bush and Regier made no public comments about Tuesday's shakeup. But longtime observers of DCF weren't surprised by the changes at the top. They think Regier is clearing the way to bring in a new team of managers. "It's pretty standard . . . it's like a new football coach wants his own assistants," said Lee Johnson, a former DCF district administrator who is now executive vice president of the Sarasota YMCA, which supervises state-financed child welfare work in Sarasota, Manatee and De Soto counties. Child advocate Jack Levine, president of the Center for Florida's Children, questioned whether the move to force out so many managers was too much change at once. DCF already had interim administrators in four districts. Now seven of 15 districts are without a permanent administrator. "My concern is rooted in the volume of change all at the same time," Levine said. "Eighty-five percent of Florida's children are living in geographies which have either an interim or a newly fired district administrator. The only urban region of Florida where we have not seen a change is the (Tampa) Bay area." However, other observers suspect Regier has a plan. "He wouldn't just leave those positions open and not have anybody in mind to fill them," said state Rep. Sandy Murman of Tampa, who heads a legislative committee that oversees DCF. David Lawrence, the former Miami Herald publisher who is heading the governor's blue-ribbon panel to examine DCF shortcomings, said Tuesday's shakeup "seems to me quite natural, quite to be expected and potentially quite healthy." Cohen, the DCF second in command who resigned Tuesday, had remained in his job despite the resignation of his boss, former DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney, four months ago. Regier also accepted resignations Tuesday from Linda Dillworth, head of DCF's economic self-sufficiency office; Todd Parrish, DCF's director of legislative affairs; regional administrator Robert Morin and deputy administrator Susan Becker in Orlando; administrator David May and deputy administrator Lori Day in Palm Beach County; and administrator Sue Gray in Polk County. "There is always the understanding that, at any time, the secretary may wish to make changes in the management team," Morin said Tuesday. The Polk County administrator, Gray, had recently fired three employees connected to the case of Alfredo Montes, a 2-year-old who police say was beaten to death by an acquaintance of his mother. Gray said the employees should have more aggressively pursued child abuse complaints against Alfredo's mother. In Palm Beach County, a grand jury last year called for four DCF workers to be fired for incompetence and negligence in two children's deaths and a beating that put another child into a coma. DCF had open cases on all three children, and the grand jury said investigators didn't do enough to help them. -- The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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