County Commission selects Gardner as health officer, for second time
Cascade County Commissioners voted unanimously during a special March 20 meeting to offer conditional employment as county health officer to Trisha Gardner, with a starting annual salary of $103,000.
The city-county health board met March 18 in a special meeting and unanimously recommended Gardner.
Commissioners interviewed Gardner and Joseph Monehin on March 11. A third candidate withdrew from interviews.
The position was advertised with a salary range of $100,000 to $105,000.
Commissioner Joe Briggs moved to offer the position to Gardner with a $103,000 salary and said commissioners had received two emails, one supporting Gardner and one supporting Monehin.
Commission Jim Larson said he’d wanted to offer $105,000 since Gardner previously served as county health officer and knew how the City-County Health Department operated, “probably isn’t a whole lot of training to go forward.”
But, he said he was okay with Briggs motion and voted in favor.
Health board votes to recommend Gardner, former county officer, to return to CCHD
Gardner for the health officer position, one she held from late 2019 to late 2021, during the COVID pandemic.
Briggs said that during that time, local public health officers had to do follow instructions from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and state agencies.
He said some measures that were implemented weren’t popular with some citizens or some commissioners, but asked “citizens who have ill feelings about that…she was doing her job and not necessarily agreeing with everything she had to do.”
The county health officer leads the City-County Health Department and is the only public official authorized by state law to make certain decisions pertaining to public health.
Gardner currently works at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.
Cascade County Commission planning to interview health officer candidates next week
During the March 18 health board meeting, Briggs, who serves as the county representative to the board, said that the process to fill the vacancy had been an “interesting journey.”
During the meeting, Briggs read emails from two board members who couldn’t attend, Matt Martin, dentist, and Rachel Amthor, physician.
Both wrote that they recommended Gardner as their preferred candidate.
Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Heather Hoyer, health board member, said that Gardner had experience locally and navigating statewide agencies.
County contracts with local doctor as search underway for new public health officer
City Commissioner Shannon Wilson, the city’s representative on the health board, said she was impressed by the quality of candidates in this round and pleased with the three selected for interviews.
She said Gardner had experience within the county and state and would be able to move into the position quickly.
Briggs said Gardner scored highest for him,
Laurie Glover, health board member, said they were “fortunate to have two such highly qualified candidates.”
Since Gardner had experience running CCHD, “I feel she could be a stabilizing force to our staff that has gone through a lot of stress.”
Gardner leaving CCHD for DPHHS job [2021]
This was the second round of interviews for the position.
Commissioners interviewed two candidates in late December, but decided to readvertise the position. A third candidate dropped out of the interviews.
“We definitely got a broader pool and a deeper pool than the first time,” Briggs said during the March 4 health board meeting.
He said the commission will work with the health board for a consensus on the next health officer.
Health board requesting additional funding from city for CCHD operations
The county made significant cuts to CCHD over the last year in an effort to reduce expenses as grant funding has been cut and revenues haven’t kept up with costs. More reductions may be needed, Trista Besich, county finance officer, told the health board on March 4 since immunization revenue was coming in significantly under projected levels.
She said they’d already made reductions noticing the slower participation at immunization clinics, but the revenue was currently about 65-70 percent of what was budgeted.
Cascade County health department budget shortfalls forced cuts, layoffs [2025]
Besich told board that they may need another $300,000 cut to account for that shortfall.
After working with commissioners to make those budget adjustments over the last year, former county health officer Abigail Hill resigned, effective Dec. 5.
The county has been operating without a health officer since and the interim administrator for the department quit the week after Hill.
Briggs told The Electric in December that the county can operate for up to 30 days without a designated public health officer, “although that is not our plan or desire. The county is currently in contract negotiations with an individual that is qualified to be the interim public health officer. We are hopeful of having that individual aboard shortly.”
Montana Supreme Court rules on city, county health board dispute [2024]
State law includes a provision that if a local health board fails to appoint a health officer within 30 days, the Montana Department of Health and Human Services may step in and appoint a health officer.
During Jan. 2 meeting, commissioners voted to approve agreement with Gladys Young for her to serve as interim public health officer from Jan. 1 through June 30 at $500 monthly rate, plus time for Young’s services onsite or electronically at $150 per hour with the minimum incremental charge for services of 15 minutes.
The county will reimburse Young for six months of medical malpractice insurance coverage beginning Jan. 1.
Young is a licensed and certified medical doctor in Montana with previous public health officer experience in Liberty County during the pandemic, according to the county.
In late December, commissioners interviewed two candidates for health officer, but weren’t satisfied with the options, so with approval from the health board, opted to readvertise the position and seek more candidates.
During the Feb. 4 health board meeting, Briggs said that county human resources had notified commissioners that 11 applications had been received so they closed the position. HR revied the applications, which were sent to the health board for scoring and the top three scheduled for interviews.
Briggs said he was told it was a strong candidate pool and the number of applicants was improved from the first round.
For the first round, the county had received five applications with some withdrawals after scoring, so interviews were scheduled with the three remaining candidates.
One candidate didn’t appear on Zoom for her scheduled slot or answer phone calls.
Hill selected as new county health officer [2022]
During the Jan. 7 health board meeting, Briggs said he’d initially had a level of confidence that they had someone in that pool with the experience needed to take CCHD forward, but after interviewing the two remaining candidates, “I was not personally excited by their actual experience.”
In reposting the position, Briggs said he didn’t want to exclude those who’d previously interviewed but “I really think we need some experience at the health department.”
During the January meeting, Wilson said both interviewed candidates had good points but “not the experience our department needs to move forward.”
The city and county have an agreement governing the operation of the Cascade County City-County Health Department that has not been modified since 1975.
In recent years, the city and county have disagreed over CCHD management under a state law change and had a temporary agreement that expired in 2022 and has not been revisited.
The Montana Supreme Court issued an opinion in 2024 upholding a district court decision on the CCHD local governing board.
The crux of the issue is a disagreement between Cascade County and the City of Great Falls on the makeup of the governing body as required by state law changes in 2021 in response to the COVID pandemic
In the fall of 2021, the city and county approved a temporary agreement to make the county commission, with one city commissioner as a nonvoting member, the designated governing body.
That agreement was in place through June 2022 while the city and county continued working on a new agreement for operation of CCHD, but no such agreement has been reached.
Gardner left CCHD effective Dec. 24, 2021.
She told the health board during a Dec. 1, 2021 meeting that she and the leadership team were looking at the division of duties internally and long-term planning and that she left her thoughts on the structure of the board of health and a new agreement between the city and county for management of CCHD as those entities work through that in light of a new state law.
City approves temporary agreement with county regarding CCHD governing body [2021]
Gardner told The Electric in 2021 that recruiting and retaining qualified staff had been a challenge, but not unique to CCHD.
She said in 2021 as she was leaving CCHD that she was excited to see where CCHD goes in the future and that there were positives to come out of the pandemic.
She said there was a better, though not full, understanding of what public health is and what they do on a regular basis, particularly from the County Commission and health board.
“Not that they didn’t know but that’s been strengthened by this, on the necessity of a health department and an independent health department and the services we provide. I believe that’s in a much firmer stance now that when I took this position,” Gardner told The Electric in 2021.
She said that over the years she’s been the health officer, there’d been some internal restructuring at CCHD to create positions such as the deputy health officer, which didn’t exist previously.
The hardest part of leaving the job, Gardner said in 2021, was “one, I really believe in the mission of what the health department does and love the services we’re able to provide to the community. But it’s also the people who work here. They have that heart and that passion. They want to see our community safe and healthy and happy. That’s something I’m so proud to say I was part of. They’re still here and doing that. That’s what makes it a bittersweet departure. I will miss them.”
Trisha Gardner named as city-county public health officer [2019]
Gardner was named public health officer in November 2019, just months before the COVID pandemic hit the county.
At that point, Gardner had worked for 10 years at CCHD and most previously was the interim prevention services division manager and privacy officer.
The position had been vacant since Tanya Houston left to work for Alluvion in March 2019, though the county contracted with Alluvion for Houston to continue filling the health officer role until August 2019.
City, county nearing temporary agreement on governing body for joint health department [2021]
In 2019, county officials have had numerous discussions about the future of the city-county health department and over the summer, the county was moving forward with plans to outsource some public health functions to Alluvion.
Those plans crumbled when some county commissioners started asking for financial details from Alluvion and shortly thereafter, Alluvion withdrew from consideration in favor of other projects it was pursuing.
Alluvion withdraws from consideration of contracting for county health services [2019]
Over the summer of 2019, the city-county health board wanted to hire a new health officer, but Briggs had reservations and during a September 2019 meeting presented financial figures to argue that CCHD was not sustainable as it was currently structured. He said during that meeting he wanted discussions on outsourcing or reorganizing.
By the end of that September 2019 meeting, the consensus was to revise the health officer job description to include a core responsibility of reorganizing CCHD with a focus on prevention services and infectious disease.
After the job was revised, the county received six applicants, but did not revise the overall CCHD structure.
