HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The just-fired state secretary in charge of drug and alcohol programs in Pennsylvania on Wednesday challenged a former top employee’s contention that he had directed her to undergo a pre-hiring interview with a lobbyist for addiction treatment contractors.
But Gary Tennis also said Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf did not ostensibly fire him over the former employee’s allegation. Rather, Wolf dismissed Tennis on Tuesday after he refused to go along with a plan to consolidate the tiny Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs into a larger agency, Tennis said.
Wolf’s office has not said why Wolf fired Tennis.
Tennis said the former employee’s meeting with a representative of the Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania was not a pre-hiring interview. Rather, he said, he had long wanted to hire her and the meeting was in preparation for that.
Tennis said it is “flat-out, 100 percent categorically false” that he allowed the lobbyist, Deb Beck, to screen the applicant.
He told reporters that Wolf offered to let him resign as secretary of the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs after Tennis said he did not support the governor’s unannounced plan to absorb the 5-year-old department into the state Department of Human Services. Tennis said he refused to resign and that he plans to fight to maintain the department as an independent entity.
Wolf has said moves to streamline state government will be part of the budget address he will make Feb. 7. The administration has already announced plans to shutter two state prisons.
Tennis’ dismissal followed a report in Tuesday’s Reading Eagle that a former agency bureau director, Angela Episale, had said Tennis told her in 2015 to meet with Beck because it “would give me my best chance” of getting hired.
Episale and Beck met for about an hour or more on March 11, 2015. Tennis emailed Episale less than a week later to say Beck “thinks you’re a good fit.” In her reply, Episale said another agency official “was surprised. She thought Deb would prefer someone with a treatment background.”
Beck - who would not release a list of her organization’s members - told reporters Wednesday the meeting “was not a job interview. It was an orientation of the field.”
Tennis said he had a “long-settled intention” to hire Episale, and provided reporters with emails that showed his interest in hiring Episale dated back to 2013.
The emails included a memo from a deputy secretary in April 2015 that said Tennis had “informally vetted” Episale “among our key stakeholders and they are completely on board as well.” Neither Tennis nor Beck could explain how that unfolded, but Tennis said he regularly sought input from people involved with his agency without giving decision-making authority to those outsiders.
Episale was hired in 2015 as director of the bureau of treatment, prevention and intervention, giving her influence over treatment policy across the state, according to the Reading Eagle. However, Tennis said her tenure in that job drew a number of complaints and she was eventually demoted.
It is not the first time questions have been raised about the influence of Beck’s organization on the department.
In June, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, wrote to Wolf to complain that Beck’s organization wielded “unbridled control” over Tennis’ department and that the department had refused to allow funding for alternatives to long-term residential treatment centers while continually pressing for more money to pay for more treatment center capacity.
On Wednesday, Scarnati said the allegations against Tennis should prompt a thorough review of referrals to long-term residential treatment centers and whether other treatment options were available or used.
The 70-employee Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs is budgeted to distribute about $115 million this year in state and federal funding to county-based addiction treatment programs. Counties must receive department approval for plans to use the money.
Tennis, 63, a former Philadelphia prosecutor, had held the $137,000-a-year job under two governors since the department was created in 2012.
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