Mapes Lastest to Leave Branstad Administration

By Lynn Campbell
IowaPolitics.com


DES MOINES — The string of top people resigning from Gov. Terry Branstad's administration continues, although the latest casualty is the result of budget cuts.

Monday was the last day of work for Bonnie Mapes, 60, administrator of the Iowa Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control, after almost seven years on the job.

State Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, on Monday wrote a letter to the editor distributed to newspapers statewide by Iowa Senate Democrats, saying that Mapes was "quietly fired" last week by Iowa Department of Public Health Director Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Quirmbach said he was "dismayed" about the news.

But Mapes, who was upset Monday evening, told IowaPolitics.com that portrayal of her departure couldn't be further from the truth.

"I was not ousted. I was not fired," Mapes said. "I'm gone now. I'm not director of the division. We had a 67 percent budget cut, a programming and staffing cut. My position was eliminated. I took early retirement. That's not fired."

The Iowa Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control's budget was cut this year from $7.8 million to $2.8 million. Mapes said state law requires supervisors to manage at least 15 people and the drastic cuts no longer left enough money to have a division. She said the plan is to integrate the Iowa Department of Public Health's Tobacco Prevention division with its Chronic Disease Division.

Miller-Meeks, who was in Boston on Monday, confirmed that Mapes' departure was a "budgetary issue" in a year of spending cuts.

"She was terminated but it was also because she was at the age where she could retire," Miller-Meeks said.

Miller-Meeks said as early as April that Mapes put forth a plan that she would resign in 2012 as a way for the division to deal with budget cuts.

"There was an option given, and she chose to retire," Miller-Meeks said. "This is a little bit earlier than anticipated."

Mapes' departure is the latest in a string of resignations and demotions in the Branstad administration. Several of those asked to resign were longtime employees or appointees who were holdovers from the administration of former Democratic Gov. Chet Culver.

Among the other departures:

Wayne Gieselman, a hog producer and grain farmer from Morning Sun in southeast Iowa, last month said he was told to quit as a chief regulator at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Also in July, Iowa Board of Regents President David Miles and President Pro Tem Jack Evans announced they would yield to Branstad's May request that they step down. Miles and Evans remain regents, but resigned from their leadership posts.

Branstad also cut Workers' Compensation Commissioner Christopher Godfrey's annual salary from about $109,000 to $73,259 in July after he refused to resign. Godfrey's new salary is the lowest level of his pay grade and is about $35,000 lower than the 12 deputies he supervises.

Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for Branstad, on Monday referred all questions about Mapes to the Iowa Department of Public Health and declined to comment about whether the personnel moves were related. Last month, Albrecht said it's common for a new governor to ask agency and department heads to resign, so the governor can replace them with people who share his vision.

But Miller-Meeks on Monday told IowaPolitics.com that Mapes' termination was "not at all" related to the other resignations. She also said that unlike the other personnel changes, "the governor was not involved in this decision at all."

Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, Iowa state epidemiologist and medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, has been named interim director of the Iowa Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control.

"Dr. Quinlisk, I don't know what her political party is. She is highly credible and extraordinarily capable. She's already a member of the department," Miller-Meeks said. "I don't know how you could construe this as me wanting a person in there of my choosing."

Quirmbach, an ex-officio member of the Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Commission, said studies show that every dollar spent on tobacco cessation leads to $3 in health-care savings. Yet during the 2011 legislative session, Republicans initially proposed completely eliminating funding for smoking cessation programs like the Just Eliminate Lies youth anti-smoking program and the Quitline Iowa telephone counseling program.

"Miller-Meeks has told some members of the Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Commission that she intends to seek legislation to disband the division entirely and that she has little interest in developing effective tobacco control policy, despite a statutory responsibility to do so," Quirmbach said in the letter released Monday by Senate Democrats. "If Iowa is serious about fighting cancer, we can't afford to undermine prevention efforts."

Miller-Meeks said the discussion about whether to eliminate the Iowa Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control has gone on since 2007, although she said no formal decisions have yet been made.

However, she said other states have moved in that direction and have either never had a separate tobacco division, or have integrated that division into other areas dealing with addictive disorders, behavioral health and prevention. She also said text messaging and web-based counseling also have been used to help smokers quit.

"We will continue our efforts in tobacco prevention," Miller-Meeks said, while aligning the department to make better and smarter use of its funding. "This gives us an opportunity to do that."