BENTON COUNTY, Iowa (KCRG) – At the beginning of the month, members of the Benton County Board of Health received a notice their positions were being eliminated effective immediately. These board members are the ones who have jurisdiction over the action taken in an environmental or health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.
One member who’s served on it for a decade says this came out of nowhere.
The first notice was sent to each of the five board members dated October 3rd. Board members sent a follow-up email to the Benton County Board of Supervisors asking what the reason for their termination was.
After a week they received another letter that didn’t give an explanation other than to cite the Iowa Code that allows the Board of Supervisors to appoint and terminate Board of Health members. Now, Benton County has now been without a single member on its Board of Health for 20 days.
All five of those board members received letters saying their positions were being terminated effective immediately. Those members told us they went back through all the open records they could find to see where their termination was voted on but couldn’t find anything.
”I received that certified letter a few days later in the main and was pretty surprised by that. It was definitely not something that we were expecting or saw coming,” said Dr. Maggie Mangold, the former chairperson of the Benton County Board of Public Health. She was on the board for 10 years.
Board members reached out asking why they were being terminated, but the letter they received back cited the Iowa Code that allows the board of supervisors to appoint and terminate Board of Health members.
”A reason was not listed as to why and that’s just concerning when you have a lot of volunteers and there’s a lot of other boards even that run counties so it was very concerning that there was no reason listed and that could just happen,” said Braxton Morrison, former vice chairperson of the Board of Public Health.
TV9 went back through public meetings and minutes of the month leading up to the termination to see if there was a public vote to terminate their positions. We couldn’t find anything.
”We get asked frequently what the story is and what happened, and we truly don’t know,” Morrison said.
Benton County has now been without an active Board of Health for 20 days, leaving Benton County unable to do certain things.
”There are certain things that that public health administrator can’t sign off on which is why a physician is required on the board of the board chair has to sign off on such as entering into contracts and receiving funding and just other things [like] vaccinations in a time of pandemic have to has the physician sign off,” Morrison said.
TV9 reached out to Benton County Board of Supervisors chairman Tracy Seeman for the reason why the board was terminated. He declined to comment but did say that they are building a new board of health.
“I’d like to understand. I am passionate about serving my county and being a good citizen and I’d just like to understand what’s going on and it’s like to see an active, engaged board of health function in our county again,” Mangold said.
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