By: Diane Benjamin
I wrote this story about the McLean County Nursing Home in April: https://blnnews.com/2020/04/27/mclean-county-nursing-home-fact-left-out/
It recaps what I knew at the time about the long time administrator resigning. Yesterday I finally received my FOIA. It contained the resignation letter submitted by Cindy Wegner.
As stated in the previous article, the County Health Committee made no mention of her resignation at the April 6th meeting, the letter is dated March 27th. It appears to be a case of “cover-up” by County officials because many do not support using taxpayer dollars for the home. The County has refused to invest to modernize the building or expand services to increase the number of filled beds. From the resignation letter, Cindy Wegner had enough abuse. She was blamed for the taxpayer dollars required to subsides operations but not allowed to implement changes to eliminate them.
I did not see any proof of this letter being shared with members of the County Board or Health Committee. I’m printing this for those who didn’t get a copy:
This is the only information sent to the Health Committee:
I found lots of interesting things in the FOIA, but this email exchange shows how Camille Rodriquez communicated with Cindy:
This was Wegner’s response:
Sound like a hostile workplace?
The County has another problem. State law requires a licensed Nursing Home Administrator on site for at least 30 hours a week. Rodriguez applied for a temporary State license for herself. She isn’t spending 30 hours a week there. She better be praying nothing serious happens there and no inspectors drop by.
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According to her LinkedIn page, Rodriquez has a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Ripon College in Wisconsin. There is a professional “blank” for four years after graduation then lists for various government and not-for-profit jobs in Illinois and Wisconsin in social service administration. The woman has no formal education in the medical or health field. Appears she is a government administration lifer.
Excellent reporting Diane. I am shocked by the lack of professionalism I see from City/County Administrators in this metropolitan area. Pam and Camille really take the cake.
Porcupine: In BN, qualifications and formal training in your field are the least of it when rewarding jobs or promotions. More important is your gender, ethnicity, who you are related to or not and if you drink and socialize with the right people after work. Has always been that way and always will be. The only way to avoid the obvious politics is to start a business and work for yourself, preferably outside of BN and Illinois.
it only takes one phone call to the right agency for them to know what’s going on at McLean Cty. I’m sure JCAH , Medicare and Area Agency on Aging would love to hear from someone regarding the doings there.
Isn’t Rodriquez overseeing the COVID response from the McLean County Health Department as well?
Don”t know, maybe a reader does know.