County Executive Melissa Agard’s office said she will work with County Board Chair Patrick Miles on an expedited process to appoint a permanent director for the county’s Department of Human Services after she said a county board supervisor “upended” the process and prompted Agard’s chosen candidate, Amy Everett, to withdraw from consideration.
The derailed nomination came two years after the County Board rejected the appointment of State Representative Shelia Stubbs to the role by former County Executive Joe Parisi. After that process failed to appoint a permanent director, the County Board passed a resolution making department heads civil service appointments in an attempt to remove politics from the process.
The failed appointment of Everett was the first test of that process.
What happened?
Everett, whose LinkedIn profile says she has been the interim CEO at Iowa-based Summit Behavioral Health since December, previously worked as chief operating officer at Mindspring in Colorado.
A search firm and County panel identified her and Astra Iheukumere, who has been interim director since August 2022, as finalists. County Board members met with both finalists in early January, and Agard announced Everett as the new director on January 22, subject to County Board confirmation.
County Board Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner, who chairs the Health and Human Needs Committee, told Madison365 in an interview Saturday that she began receiving questions and comments from colleagues and constituents about Everett’s time at Mindspring. News stories in Colorado-based news outlets described fiscal trouble as well as allegations of poor service to patients dating to before 2022, when Everett joined.
She said she emailed Everett to set up a meeting to ask more about Everett’s time at Mindspring. Agard chief of staff Carrie Springer told Madison365 that Everett contacted her, unsure what to do about that request to meet, and Springer scheduled a Zoom call for herself, Everett, Wegleitner and Department of Administration director Greg Brockmeyer.
That meeting was on Wednesday, February 5. Everett told those assembled that she had held off on signing the contract for the new position until after the meeting.
On the afternoon of February 6, Everett emailed Brockmeyer to say she was rescinding her acceptance of the job offer.
“I am concerned with what appeared like a lack of alignment with my candidacy,” she wrote. “In a meeting with (Wegleitner) after I accepted my offer, it was clear to me there was more familiarity and comfortability with the incumbent candidate. Specifically, I felt that the county board member presented as oppositional to me, and the experience felt more like a deposition than a welcoming introduction to the role.”
Agard announced that Everett had withdrawn in a press release at 4 pm Friday, February 7.
“It is disappointing that certain members of the Dane County Board upended the process they created in 2023,” Agard wrote in the release. “Putting candidates through months of scrutiny, including interviews and asking the public to weigh in on their qualifications, only to disrupt the outcome after an offer was made is unfair and disingenuous. It is a lot to put people through, and it sends the wrong message about how we conduct hiring in Dane County.”
Wegleitner said the decision came as a shock, especially since she intended to vote in favor of Everett’s confirmation.
“I was shocked and confused by Amy’s decision, because I was supporting her,” Wegleitner said. “I was putting the confirmation resolution on the agenda (for the next HHN Committee meeting). I don’t know if she wasn’t expecting questions, or didn’t really understand that there would be. It was a little confusing to me.”
Wegleitner said she had questions about Everett’s time at Mindspring, and those questions were answered to her satisfaction in the meeting.
“I asked questions that are tough, but I thought we ended very amicably and friendly, and I communicated my support,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter how anyone else felt it went,” Springer said. “Amy Everett told us how she felt the call went, and that’s how she made her decision.”
Springer also said the questions that were the purpose of that meeting could have been addressed earlier.
“Everyone knew where she worked. Her resume had been public for a long time,” Springer said. “No one was hiding anything. It had been public for quite some time.”
And, Springer noted, questions could have been asked in one of those public sessions earlier in January. Wegleitner contends there wasn’t enough time in those sessions to address every detail.
“There’s a lot to cover,” she said. “And (Everett) didn’t really bring it up other than sort of in passing. There were sort of some stock questions that we had, that we had sort of asked both of the candidates, so it didn’t really get addressed much there.”
Wegleitner said she would have supported either candidate, but was “surprised” that Agard chose Everett.
“It just seemed like maybe it was a more politically risky move, what with Astra having so many community ties and being in the position for so long in the interim role,” she said.
Tension in the fallout
Wegleitner and County Board Chair Patrick Miles take issue with how Agard announced Everett’s decision.
Miles said in a text message to Madison365 that Agard informed him less than an hour before the press release was issued, and did not inform him of its tone – that is, that it would blame Wegleitner for upending the process.
“I asked her to hold off on the press release to give me a chance to talk with Amy to clarify the rationale of the private conversation with Sup. Wegleitner on the off chance I could get her to reconsider,” Miles wrote. “The Exec said she tried everything & nothing was going to change her mind. I was not given Amy’s number nor time to try to reach her.”
Miles and Wegleitner issued a press release of their own later Friday evening. In it, Miles noted that Everett had explicitly offered to answer any additional questions.
“The Human Services Director will face tough questions in their role, given the complexity and importance of that department,” Miles said in the release. ‘If the act of asking these questions truly led to the candidate’s decision to rescind, they may have found this position very challenging.”
Springer said she doesn’t think the episode will cause lasting damage to the relationship between the County Executive and the Board.
“We have plenty of other things that we’re working on together, and we will continue to work through this together as well,” she said. “This is a very disappointing result, because Amy was a highly qualified person that we were really looking forward to bringing here. But that by no means precludes working together on this hiring and other things going forward.”
It was the second consecutive DHS director appointment derailed by the county board. In April 2023, County Executive Joe Parisi appointed State Representative and former County Board supervisor Shelia Stubbs to the role. Two committees and ultimately the entire board rejected the nomination, citing Stubbs’ lack of experience managing a large organization and the full-time demands of the state legislature (though Stubbs eventually pledged to give up her seat in the Assembly if confirmed). Some also cited remarks Stubbs made at End Times Ministries Church – scrutiny others viewed as racist.
Meanwhile, Astra Iheukumere has been running the department since longtime director Lynn Green retired in 2022. She holds a bachelor’s and two masters degrees from UW-Madison. She spent nearly four years as Madison’s deputy mayor and another four as assistant director of community networks and national partnerships for UW’s Population Health Institute before joining the county’s DHS as deputy director in 2019.
Dana Pellebon, a former county board chair who ran against Agard last fall, said in a text message to Madison365 that there’s a simple solution.
“We have a competent, excellent interim Director that has been running the department for almost three years and has made it as a finalist twice,” she wrote. “The question is why she has not been hired being that she has never received any negative feedback from any of the four county executives she has worked under and was the pick from County Board leadership after the interview process? We have an opportunity to have a Director in place who has the relationships with agencies, ties to the community, and deep knowledge of the department being that she has been through three budget cycles and has run the department on her own throughout that time.”
Both Everett and Iheukumere declined to comment.
