Letter to the Editor

I emailed the letter to the editor to the Washington Missourian this morning. I'm hopeful that Mr. Miller will print it. Here's the letter detailing our recent ordeal with the director of the Franklin Co. Health Dept. and the Franklin County Counselor:

To the Editor:

A recent experience our family had with the director of the Franklin County Health Dept. and the Franklin County Counselor made us feel it was necessary to inform the voters, citizens and taxpayers of Franklin Co., in our opinion, how inept these officials are and how our tax dollars are being wasted on an impotent health dept. director position.

We are in the process of an international adoption and a requirement of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, USCIS, was to complete a form for our daughter’s visa to enter the U.S. Part of the form required us to have a medical doctor, who had agreed to treat her, sign the USCIS form and write a letter. Once we had the MD’s signature, we needed the director of the local health department where our daughter will be living, to sign the form and write a letter. The only purpose of the director’s signature on the form and the letter was to verify the credentials of the MD, nothing more, nothing less.

This seemed to be a very simple task and we have communicated with families in other states who took the same form to their local health dept. and received the completed form and letter back within a day and in one case it only took an hour.

But not in Franklin Co. MO. We took the paperwork in on April 10 and were to receive a phone call when it was completed. We waited five days and then called on April 15th. We were told the director had to “run it by the county attorney”. We were told this multiple times on multiple days and were even told the health department has to run everything by the county attorney, Mark Vincent, including purchases.

We called again on the 16th and 17th and were told the same thing over and over. We were never able to speak to the director, Conn Roden. He was always “out of the office”. I finally went to the health dept. on the afternoon of the 17th and was given the same story about the attorney and Mr. Roden was, of course, out of the office. I then said I would call the attorney to get this moving. When we called the attorney later that day, he was “out of town”, but his secretary stated the health dept. had called. So after sitting on our paperwork for a week and multiple calls and a personal visit, they finally started to act. Mr. Vincent later confirmed this when he admitted he hadn’t received our paperwork until April 18.

We called the health dept. on Monday, April 21 to check on the status. We were told Mr. Roden was out and would return shortly. Even though we again asked to be called back, no one returned our call. We then called Tuesday morning, April 22, and of course, he was not at the office. We called the attorney’s office. He was out of the office all day. Finally, after 12 days of waiting and not one single phone call initiated by the health dept. or the attorney’s office to update us, we received a call from Mr. Roden that afternoon. He had received a letter from the county attorney stating a couple of concerns.

His first concern was that he was not familiar with our MD. And he then stated the obvious, that the MD could be confirmed with a phone call. That is where his concerns should have ended because that is the only thing the federal government required of the county government, to verify the MD. But Mr. Vincent took it upon himself to suddenly take over the role of the federal government and the USCIS.

Based on his next concern, Mr. Vincent would not allow Mr. Roden to complete our paperwork. He stated his second concern was that our daughter wasn’t eligible for the waiver we were seeking, even though that is not his job; it is not under his jurisdiction or within his power to make that determination. The information we submit will be processed by USCIS and they are the ones who will evaluate our case and make the decision on our paperwork. As stated earlier, the health department’s only role in all of this was to verify the MD we had chosen to care for our daughter. Despite all that, these two men took it upon themselves to unnecessarily delay our adoption process and possibly cause our daughter to spend even more time in an orphanage instead of joining her forever family.

They had no right, authority or legal basis to do this, but they did it anyway, because most of the time, government officials are not held accountable. Well, we are holding them accountable.

Finally, I called Mr. Vincent’s office Wednesday morning, April 23. I spoke to him for 10 minutes and he finally agreed to have Mr. Roden complete the paperwork. Of course, he didn’t admit he was wrong, but the fact that one day later he was completely reversing himself indicates he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

I have always known government is naturally inefficient, but Franklin Co. has taken inefficiency to new heights. According to the health dept. itself, everything they do has to be run by the county counselor, including purchases. A simple, self-explanatory form that should have taken a day, two at the most, to complete, took two weeks to complete. And that was only after a lot of heartache, anguish and many phone calls, only one of which was initiated by our local government.

If the health dept’s director can’t even complete a simple form without clearing it through the county counselor, and must run everything by the attorney, “including purchases”, why are we taxpayers paying him more than $61,000/year? If the county counselor is already micromanaging the health dept., why doesn’t he just take on the title of director and save the taxpayers some money?

And if the county counselor can not read a simple federal government form and understand the difference between the role and responsibilities of the county government and the federal government, I would submit to the voters, citizens and taxpayers of Franklin Co. that he is not qualified for his position of Franklin County Counselor.