Commission approves ARPA funding for health department

After months of argument and delays, the Hill County Health Department was finally given access to American Rescue Plan Act funds the county commission voted to allocate them last September, funds the department has been asking for repeatedly since that vote.

In a special meeting with Hill County Public Health Director Kim Berg Tuesday, the commission voted 2-0 to make up to $100,000 available to the department for their COVID-19 prevention efforts, with commissioners Mark Peterson and Jake Strissel voting for the resolution and Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean abstaining.

The meeting began with McLean reading an email she had sent to Berg asking for some information and proposing that instead of giving her department the $100,000 the commission simply vote to increase the department's budget this year, and possibly do so again next year.

She said she interpreted Berg's response as an indication of her being in favor of this, which she said was one of the reason for what happened last Thursday.

Berg said she never made any indication that she was in favor of McLean's proposal, that she only provided the information she requested.

Berg has been trying to get access to this $100,000, which she's said can pay for the extreme amount of work their employees have had to do amid the pandemic.

In September of last year, the commission voted to allocate up to $100,000 in ARPA money to the department so they could pay for that work, but Peterson said in a quarterly meeting of the Hill County Health Board Jan. 26 that he hadn't signed any documents authorizing the department to use the money the commission voted to allocate them last year.

Berg, also the county health officer, said in a Hill County Health Board meeting back in August of last year that her department received no funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, which she said could have been used to bolster her department and keep it sustainable had the commission allocated it.

She said she had reached out to the commission multiple times by email asking for funds to keep the department sustainable along with suggestions about holding public meetings on the subject, but received no reply.

When she saw in the Havre Daily News that the commission was talking about how to use the money, she said, she reached out again to ask why no funds were being allocated to public health given the fact that the pandemic was still ongoing but received no answer beyond that the commission's primary use for the funds was the Milk River Levee project.

At last month's meeting she said that, after the commissioners voted to allocate the ARPA money to the department, she asked Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong what she would need to do to get access to that money and was told to provide the necessary documents, which she did, but was later told that the commission wouldn't sign off on the money because they believed she already had enough money.

McLean denied that that wording had been used, but nearly all of her, and Peterson's, hesitance to give Berg's department access to the money was framed around recent budget adjustment and grants the department received, which they said call into question whether the department needs the money.

Berg addressed these recent grants and budget adjustments and said they all pay for specific positions and programs, and none address the issues she needs the ARPA money for, namely paying her employees for their work.

She said these grants cannot be used to do that, and the department rarely uses all of the money provided in those grants because the department's pay scale isn't that high. Any money left over from these grants has to be returned to the granting organization.

She said these grants only apply to new hires of contract tracers and case investigators, which she doesn't have, not for the people who have been working nonstop since the pandemic began and have had to be compensated with county general funds because she doesn't have the ARPA dollars necessary to pay them.

Berg said she's had to use county funds to pay for the work the department is doing, but there'd be no reason to if they had access to ARPA funds.

The issue seemed to come to a head at an unusual meeting of the Hill County Commission last Thursday, as a resolution to give the county Health Department access to the $100,000 failed 0-3 when the meeting resumed later in the day.

Most of Thursday's meeting took place at 10 a.m., the normally scheduled time for the commission's weekly business meeting, but after discussing a possible change to the resolution betweem Berg, Peterson and Strissel said they wanted to wait for McLean, who was absent, to return so she could be apprised of the change and vote on it.

The commission reconvened the meeting around 2:40 p.m. and proceeded to discuss the resolution, which Peterson said he thought was all but a done deal.

At the reconvened meeting, as well as Tuesday's meeting, McLean argued that the county could use the ARPA money in a number of different ways and allocating it all to Berg's department worried her.

At Tuesday's meeting Berg said she is and has always been a trustworthy county employee and she's never done anything that merits suspicion.

Peterson agreed with Berg's assessment, saying he's worked with her for as long as he's been a commissioner and has never questioned her integrity.

"Not once, not one time did I ever feel that there was any question as to what you were doing or where your intent was to make that the best department in the state of Montana," he said.

"I was taken aback or shocked ... on how the vote went last Thursday," he added.

Peterson, like McLean and Strissel, voted against the resolution Thursday.

McLean said, last week as well as Tuesday, that she was not calling Berg or her department dishonest, but Berg said her department is being ignored and feels completely unsupported by the commission.

"All I asked for was some support for my health department that has been working their tails off since the beginning of this pandemic," Berg said.

"We are doing the work that needs to be done," she added. "... All I'm asking for is the money you approved in September."

Berg said she has no problem with he county using ARPA funds to improve the community and she's only asking for a little bit of it for the work they do, and in fact many have told her that she's asking for far too little.

"You have $3.2 million," she said. "I don't see why the work of public health seems so unimportant."

Peterson seemed to agree with Berg, saying that the county is not going to get everything it wants with the ARPA funds they have, but they have enough to put a serious dent in a lot of projects that will help the county.

McLean said that ARPA money could be used for a number of things like replacing the h-vac system in the courthouse, as a match for other grants and again advocated for instead increasing the health department's budget this year, and perhaps again next year.

"Is that so hard for us to do a budget amendment?" she asked.

Berg responded by pointing out that her department is, at this moment, trying to get money needed for COVID-19 prevention, so obviously the answer is yes.

"With all respect, it has been very hard for me to get any money," she said. "I literally have been trying since September. So, yeah, it is hard, it is very hard. I would honestly just like some support for my department."

Armstrong said, as Berg has argued in the past, that given how unpredictable the pandemic is, giving Berg's department access to these funds will give them the flexibility to respond to an evolving situation.

"You have no idea what's going to happen," Armstrong said.

Peterson concurred and said with new versions of the highly contagious omicron variant beginning to spread in the U.S. another uptick in cases seems likely and the department needs to be supported.