One veteran employee says she was instructed not to return phone calls from residents who expressed health concerns about natural gas development.
“We were absolutely not allowed to talk to them,” said Tammi Stuck, who worked as a community health nurse in Fayette County for nearly 36 years.
Another retired employee, Marshall P. Deasy III, confirmed that.
Deasy, a former program specialist with the Bureau of Epidemiology, said the department also began requiring field staff to get permission to attend any meetings outside the department. This happened, he said, after an agency consultant made comments about drilling at a community meeting.
In the more than 20 years he worked for the department, Deasy said, “community health wasn’t told to be silent on any other topic that I can think of.”
The Corbett administration initially denied that such a list existed:
The Health Department initially denied the existence of both the drilling “buzzwords” list and the employee permission form. A spokeswoman called the two retired employees’ claims “erroneous.”
The department later acknowledged the existence of the documents, but said these policies were meant to guide–not silence–employees in responding to complaints.Some, including Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News, are calling for an investigation by lawmakers in Harrisburg.
Whatever happened here, it's clear that the we haven't heard the last on this. We need to know why the natural gas industry was seemingly singled out for special treatment -- by a department tasked with protecting public health.
Stay tuned.
Andrew Sharp is PennFuture's director of outreach and is based in Philadelphia. He tweets at @RexBainbridge.
