Another top-level staffer leaving DHEC as coronavirus rages
Another top official is leaving the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control after spending much of the year helping guide the agency during the coronavirus pandemic.
Jennifer Read, the department’s chief of staff, resigned last month and will depart the agency Friday.
Read, 42, said she enjoyed her 10 years at DHEC, working her way up from an entry-level job to chief of staff. But she said it was time to leave. She declined to discuss her future plans.
“I had gotten to the point where I felt like I had done everything that I wanted to do at the agency,’’ Read told The State. “It wasn’t anything negative. I’m ready for a new challenge, something new. It was hard, actually, because I loved the job.’’
Her departure marks at least the fifth by a high-ranking staff member since the coronavirus first was discovered in South Carolina last March.
Others known to have resigned or retired during the disease outbreak include DHEC director Rick Toomey; health division chief Joan Duwve; public health laboratory director Atwell Coleman; and Mike Elieff, who headed the agency’s public health preparedness response section. The agency has scrambled to fill those positions and recently hired Navy doctor Edward Simmer to take the director post vacated by Toomey.
It isn’t fully known why high-level staff members have left during the health crisis. Most who commented said it was for personal or health reasons.
But working at DHEC has been a grind through the coronavirus outbreak.
At times, the agency has been at odds with state legislators and Gov. Henry McMaster’s staff over how to respond to the virus.
McMaster, after initially ordering the shutdown of many businesses in the early spring, allowed virtually all of them to reopen to help the state’s ailing economy.
Read had urged McMaster’s office not to allow restaurant dining rooms, barber shops and some other businesses to open too quickly.
The governor’s office, however, did not take the department’s advice, deciding to let restaurants reopen dining rooms a week sooner than the agency recommended. Restaurants and bars are among the businesses where coronavirus is being spread, critics say.
“Our recommendation is to wait to resume in-person dining at South Carolina restaurants until May 18,’‘ Read’s May 1 email to the governor’s office said. “This will allow us to see if there is any impact on infection rates in the state from lifting the mandatory home-or-work order, partial resumption of retail sales and resumption of outdoor dining services.’‘
Read’s email wasn’t the only complaint about the governor’s office. Epidemiologist Linda Bell, who still works at DHEC, called the governor’s staff a “manipulative’’ group that had mischaracterized her comments about reopening restaurants during the Covid 19 outbreak.
While at DHEC, Read moved rapidly from an entry-level program staffer in the agency’s health division to head of media relations and chief of staff under former director Catherine Heigel, as well as Toomey.
Read tried to change the agency’s approach to media relations during her time there. After years of department staffers stonewalling journalists who sought information, Read embraced a more open style, favoring the release of information to show transparency. But that stance sometimes conflicted with other high-level staff about when and whether to release information, most notably on the recent search for a new director..
It was not immediately known when DHEC would fill the $127,500 per year chief of staff position, one of the most important jobs within the agency.
The chief of staff, among other things, takes on high level projects assigned by the director, oversees emergency response, helps the agency director map strategy and examines employee recruitment. This year, much of the work focused on coordinating the department’s response to the coronavirus.
Read said she had considered leaving DHEC last year but chose to stay through the end of the year because of the coronavirus response challenge.
“We thank Jennifer for her years of dedicated service to the agency, especially in her most recent role as Chief of Staff,’’ DHEC’s media relations office said in an email Wednesday. “Her forward-thinking leadership and compassion for the environmental and public health services the agency provides to South Carolinians have set the foundation for her successor to build upon further. We wish her sincere luck as she departs to pursue a new career opportunity.’’
This story was originally published January 7, 2021 at 9:28 AM.
