By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island General Assembly’s leading advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities says there’s an inherent conflict in a state employee also serving as state coordinator of the multi-agency efforts to comply with a 2014 civil rights consent decree.

“If you’re working for the state, I don’t know how you work for the 4,000 people” the consent decree seeks to protect, said state Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, who also chairs a special legislative commission studying Project Sustainability, the state’s fee-for-service reimbursement system for private providers of developmental disability services.

But the principal lawyer for the state in the consent decree case says that legally, it’s immaterial whether the consent decree coordinator is a state employee or an independent contractor. For many reasons, a state employee is the best choice at this stage of compliance, Marc DeSisto, the lawyer, said in a statement.

From 2016 until earlier this year, the consent decree coordinator, a position required by the agreement, was an independent contractor. The most recent contractor, Tina Spears, left the post in April. She was succeeded by Brian Gosselin, the Chief Strategy Officer for the Executive Office of Human Services (EOHHS.) Gosselin also continues to do his salaried job.

“The consent decree coordinator is a critical role in ensuring compliance with the consent decree and court orders. The responsibility includes coordinating across all state agencies,” DiPalma said in a recent telephone interview. “I don’t know how that’s done on a part time basis” by someone who also has another job.

Since the post was established in 2015 there have been five consent decree coordinators, including Gosselin, who has served as the interim coordinator twice.

In a statement, DeSisto said “the state as a whole is responsible for compliance, not a single coordinator.”

There is no legal impediment to a state employee serving as the coordinator, nor is there a requirement concerning the number of hours a week the coordinator must spend to fulfill those duties, DiSisto said.

“Over time and in recognition of the progress and evolving dynamics concerning compliance, we have refined the role of the coordinator to drive and coordinate the state’s ongoing compliance efforts,” he said.

An EOHHS spokesman said Gosselin was appointed because of his familiarity with the consent decree and because he would bring stability to the leadership of compliance efforts as the consent decree enters the second half of its 10-year span.

“The state cannot afford to have further turnover in the coordinator role,” David Levesque, the EOHHS spokesman said in an email, “especially during a time while there is going to be (a) Court Monitor transition.” Charles Moseley, the original monitor, has retired, and a new one has not yet been selected.

“A state employee is more likely to remain in this position than an independent contractor,” DeSisto said.

DiPalma agrees that “it’s critical that we have stability in that (coordinator’s) position, but no rationale has been given for why we have had five coordinators in the last five years. Without that information, I don’t know that the coordinator we have now is going to last any longer,” he said. He said his comments did not reflect any judgment of Gosselin.

Levesque, the EOHHS spokesman, said, “EOHHS is fortunate to be able to tap someone of Brian’s skill set and experience, particularly his intimate knowledge of the consent decree process in Rhode Island.”

He and DeSisto each said that the U.S. Department of Justice and Moseley, then the monitor, agreed to Gosselin’s appointment.

Gosselin will continue to be paid $117,482 a year as chief strategy officer, Levesque said, and has a team of staffers to support him in that role.

The independent contractors in the job, Mary Madden, Dianne Curran, and Spears, each made $100,000 a year.

Madden’s and Curran’s contracts said they each had the “full authority” of the Governor and the Secretary of EOHHS to oversee and coordinate compliance efforts in all state agencies

Beginning in December, 2018, changes in Spears’ job description and her contract suggest that her role might have become more circumscribed.

In December, the job description was amended to require the coordinator to make “weekly written reports to management team and EOHHS leadership team detailing coordination progress, achievements, challenges and upcoming milestones.”

Two other changes in the job description called for the coordinator to use a “mutually agreed upon escalation protocol to swiftly address issues of concern” and to use a “state approved communications and engagement plan when representing the state at public events and with stakeholders.”

The coordinator was to have a “designated team member” in each of the three primary agencies responsible for consent decree compliance as a point of contact for responding to “issues and concerns.” And the coordinator was required to include a “management team member” on all email communications related to the three respective agencies. The three agencies are the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals; the Office of Rehabilitation Services (part of the Department of Human Services) and the Rhode Island Department of Education.

At the end of Spears’ one-year contract in January, 2019, it was amended to include the revised job description and extended six months, to June 30, 2019.

Spears, who is now executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), a trade association of private service providers, offered her perspective on how the job description changed.

Spears, interviewed in August, said the consent decree coordinator has a unique role in coordinating activities among three separate state agencies to advance compliance with the consent decree, and there is a “natural tug-and-pull kind of dynamic” that can run in several directions.

“There were times when that (tug and pull) became challenging. I’m also the kind of person who’s pretty direct about what I expect and when it becomes challenging I usually address it. So we worked on agreement on how to develop a communications strategy” and a protocol to follow when there was disagreement, she said.

The job at the CPNRI became open when the former director, Donna Martin, announced her departure effective March 1. Spears said the new job was an opportunity to be a leader in systems change “in a way that really elevates our mission, elevates our voice, and elevates our practices.”

Spears, who has parented a child with extensive disabilities and medical issues, has worked at the Rhode Island Parent Information Network as a peer family mentor and government lobbyist. She also has worked as an analyst in the Senate Fiscal Office, where she said she learned about the consent decree and found her calling at the policy level. She left the Senate job to become consent decree coordinator in January, 2018.