Big tasks ahead at DHEC as screening panel approves new director

Former Duke Energy executive Catherine Heigel has plenty to do when she becomes director at the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Heigel, expected to be confirmed by the Senate in the next two weeks, will take control of an agency that has been leaderless – and some say adrift – for most of this year.

The department, one of the state’s largest with 3,417 employees, is beset with morale problems and has been unable this spring to answer basic public health questions, state senators said Thursday. In the past four years, the agency also has lost key personnel whose experience has not been replaced, lawmakers said.

Couple that with longer-standing questions about the agency’s environmental protection efforts and senators said Heigel has a big task ahead.

But they said she is more than capable. Heigel won enthusiastic support Thursday from a Senate screening panel that includes some of DHEC’s toughest critics.

“When you have an agency that does not have a director in charge, you have a tendency for morale to be down and things to start to get out of whack,” Sen. Floyd Nicholson, D-Greenwood, said. Heigel “has to just come in there and get the team back together and show she’s concerned about the welfare of the citizens of the state.”

Heigel, a daughter of Darlington County educators, said she realizes running DHEC is a big job. Among her first tasks will be to learn from employees and others knowledgeable about the agency and hiring senior level staff, she said. She said she will try to make the agency more transparent and efficient.

“My objectives are to engage in a substantial listening tour for the first 100 days, to meet with interested stakeholders internally and externally,” Heigel said.

Many high-level – and seasoned – employees have left the agency since Catherine Templeton took the director’s job in 2012. Among those were the agency’s longtime chief of staff Doug Calvert, and health chief Lisa Waddell, a respected doctor who was replaced by Gov. Nikki Haley’s budget and policy director.

Within her first year, Templeton had laid off more than 50 employees. This year, some members of Templeton’s hand-picked upper level management team have left since Templeton quit in January, saying she had put in enough time.

Heigel, 44, said she needs to “build the team,” and work with the DHEC board to set the agency’s vision.

“I’m going to be very internally focused for a while because I’ve got a lot to learn,” she said after Thursday’s hearing.

Heigel would earn $154,879 annually. She won the DHEC board’s nomination last month after beating out a field of about 100. She would run the agency that regulates everything from hospital expansions to tattoo parlors to air quality. It also issues environmental permits to industry.

Senators said she’s a good choice – and needed. Some said Thursday that DHEC’s failure to explain how it came up with the details of a plan to change a state hospital certificate of need law is an example of the department’s shortcomings recently.

It took less than an hour for the screening committee to approve Heigel for the director’s job.

“You may be a lady for all seasons,” Sen. John Courson, R-Richland, said in praising Heigel’s background in both business and environmental affairs.

A 1992 University of South Carolina graduate, Heigel has a law degree from Ohio State University. She has worked professionally at the S.C. Department of Consumer Affairs, in private legal practice and with Duke Energy.

She served as South Carolina president at Duke from 2010-2012. Heigel worked on an array of issues, including development of new nuclear plants in Cherokee County and relicensing work on dams operated by Duke. She was involved in helping to settle a lawsuit by former S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster over interstate water rights on the Catawba River.

Heigel said she has no financial interests in any power company that would cause a conflict in her role as DHEC director. She said she will resign her current position as a Santee Cooper power company board member. She said she would recuse herself from any matters at DHEC that would appear to be a conflict with her past as a power company official. The department regulates Duke Energy and Santee Cooper, which need environmental permits to provide power.

Heigel met individually with most members of the Senate screening committee before Thursday’s confirmation hearing. Only a handful of questions were asked during the hearing, much of it dominated by praise for Heigel.

Heigel’s screening hearing Thursday was in sharp contrast to the lengthy and contentious meeting last winter that led the DHEC board’s previous pick for the director’s job to withdraw from nomination. An uproar ensued over Eleanor Kitzman’s lack of qualifications and her friendship with Haley, who urged the DHEC board to choose Kitzman.

Unlike Kitzman, Heigel has extensive experience in environmental regulation and conservation matters. Not only did she work for more than a decade at Duke Energy, but she served on the Nature Conservancy board.

Democratic Sens. Joel Lourie and Darrell Jackson, both of Columbia, said they’re confident she’s up to the job. Both have been critical of DHEC in recent years. Jackson said he’s particularly concerned about low morale that he said appears to have affected the agency under Templeton, a charming lawyer praised for shaking up a lethargic agency but criticized for abruptly forcing people to quit.

Jackson said he had initial concerns about a possible conflict of interest involving Heigel’s ties to the power industry. But he said those worries were eased after he met with her. Both he and Lourie said they believe Heigel will provide an independent voice at DHEC, standing up to Haley and her hand-chosen DHEC board.

“She’s very level headed and an independent thinker,” Lourie said. “I think she is a grand slam.”

Heigel, a lawyer who was born in Florence, now is a Greenville resident. She has three children and plans to commute to work in Columbia, she told the committee. Her father was a former assistant education superintendent in Darlington County. Her brother is a career military officer.

“Public service runs very deep in my family,” Heigel said, noting that the “option to serve is something that I don’t take lightly.”

This story was originally published May 21, 2015 at 11:04 AM.