Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu appeared to violate the county charter by ignoring the advice of medical professionals when hiring Dr. Allison Hunt, the medical examiner whose contract is now ending after an incident where two bodies were mishandled.
The Whatcom County Charter states in Article 3 of The Executive Branch that “the County Medical Examiner shall be appointed by the County Executive from applicants approved by the Whatcom County Medical Society and the County Sheriff and shall be confirmed by the County Council.”
Dr. Marta Kazymyra, who served as the representative for the Northwest Washington Medical Society, said she did not recommend the county’s hire of Hunt, of Hunt Forensics, for the contracted position in 2021 during the selection process. The sheriff’s recommendation was not known by press time.
Kazymyra, a longtime Blaine doctor at Bay Medical Clinic, said she discussed Hunt’s application and interview with the Northwest Washington Medical Society throughout the hiring process.
“We were not concerned about her qualifications in terms of a person who can do an autopsy,” Kazymyra said. “We were concerned about the fact that we were dealing with county money, and she didn’t know anything about running a business.”
Sidhu could not immediately be reached for comment.
Jed Holmes, public affairs and strategy manager for the Whatcom County Executive’s Office, told The Northern Light in an email that Sidhu did not believe his actions violated the charter.
"He received a recommendation from the interview panel to move forward with the contract. The Medical Society and Sheriff were represented on the interview panel, and the Executive understood the panel’s consensus recommendation to imply candidate approval by the Medical Society and Sheriff,” Holmes wrote. “The Executive did not receive any communication ahead of the appointment from either the Medical Society or Sheriff indicating that they did not approve of the candidate.”
Holmes said his own understanding was the interview panel led a discussion and made a recommendation, rather than holding a vote. Holmes was unable to provide documentation of the interview panelists’ individual recommendation by press time.
“I have not yet found any documentation that Dr. Kazymyra submitted a different recommendation or there was an official recommendation from the Whatcom County Medical Society,” Holmes wrote. “But I haven’t concluded my search.”
Northwest Washington Medical Society, a professional association of physicians in Whatcom and San Juan counties, wrote in a statement to The Northern Light that the board was disappointed by the county executive’s decision to bypass its representative’s recommendation.
“We had significant reservations about the candidate and did not support their hiring, yet the decision was made without our endorsement,” the statement read.
The county executive’s office announced August 5 that an independent investigative report found deficiencies in how the office handled two bodies being stored in unrefrigerated facilities. In mid-May, the corpses were found severely decomposed after a hot weekend in Moles Farewell Tributes and Crematory Center’s uncooled garage, where the medical examiner’s office was renting space as its facility underwent construction. The investigation found the incident was isolated.
Holmes said August 13 that Sidhu was finding a way to terminate the medical examiner’s contract and was searching for a replacement. However, Hunt’s attorney, Joan Mell of III Branches Law in Pierce County, said Hunt initiated leaving her contract. The scope of her service obligations will be decided in litigation, Mell said.
“Whatcom has indicated it intends to move forward status quo or sue me for breach of contract – I have recommended formal mediation to attempt amicable separation because changes must be made now not in litigation,” Hunt wrote in an email through Mell.
Hunt added she was the sole forensic pathologist in Whatcom County and that she trusts her staff to work professionally with funeral home colleagues and families while she is in the surgical suite, as she was on the day of the incident.
Hunt said that Whatcom County must provide the medical examiner dedicated facilities within its control to ensure standard practices.
“At this juncture, we do not need an outside investigator opining about who to blame for a staff person forgetting to verify that decedents were properly stored – proper storage is not optional,” Hunt said. “We have to do better. While bona fide mistakes happen and this is one such example, we cannot move forward status quo.”
Sidhu wrote in his statement on Hunt’s contract ending that he appreciated Hunt’s service to the county.
“She took on this role in the midst of the pandemic and during a period of an unprecedented number of homicides and overdoses,” Sidhu wrote. “Preparing the Medical Examiner’s Office for accreditation has been very difficult work, and I deeply respect what she has accomplished here since 2021.”
Former medical examiner Dr. Gary Goldfogel said he gave Whatcom County five years’ notice before retirement due to the specialized nature of his profession. (Only 17 forensic pathologists work in Washington state and the profession faces a nationwide shortage, according to Timothy Grisham, deputy director of the Washington Association of County Officials.)
While the initial notice wasn’t given during Sidhu’s tenure, Goldfogel said he provided reminders during his annual reports to the county executive that he would retire at the end of 2021.
Despite the reminders, the county didn’t solicit a request for proposals for the contracted medical examiner until August 4, 2021, and only received one proposal – the one from Hunt Forensics.
“I don’t think they took that degree of difficulty seriously,” Goldfogel said.
Holmes wrote that the county began searching for a replacement five months before its contract with Goldfogel’s company, Bayside Pathology, ended, which he said is a typical timeframe for going out to bid for contracts. He added the county executive’s office didn’t have records of Goldfogel giving notice to the previous administration, and that it would be unusual to start recruiting five years out.
On September 29, 2021, a seven-member interview panel conducted the first interview with Hunt. The panel consisted of Kazymyra; then-Sheriff Bill Elfo; Dr. Jan Garavaglia, a forensic pathologist in Skagit County; Mike Hilley, Whatcom County EMS manager; Kendra Cristelli, director of Support Officer Community Care of Whatcom County; Tyler Schroeder, then-deputy county executive; and Louise Trapp, then-administrative manager of the Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
In addition to Kazymyra, other panelists told The Northern Light they hadn’t recommended Hunt for the position. One of them, Garavaglia, said Hunt didn’t have the experience of running a medical examiner’s office.
“It looked like she would be over her head with what they expected,” Garavaglia said.
Garavaglia said she believed the county didn’t grasp the nationwide shortage of medical examiners at the time.
“Because they hadn’t been exposed to trying to hire a medical examiner in 30-plus years, I don’t believe they understood the concept of what would make a good medical examiner and what wouldn’t,” Garavaglia said. “They just wanted someone to take that contract.”
After the initial interview, the county put out a second request for proposals on October 6, 2021, and attempted to inform national and regional associations of forensic pathologists, Holmes wrote. Despite efforts, no other applications were submitted.
The interview panel met again on November 3 for Hunt’s second interview before making the recommendation for the county executive to appoint Hunt, Holmes wrote.
“In this case the panel’s recommendation coming out of the November 3 meeting was to move forward with the contract,” Holmes said of the 2021 hiring process.
Sidhu wrote in a November 9 letter to Whatcom County Council announcing the appointment that the county “initiated a solicitation process that would ensure a broad recruitment effort.”
Kazymyra said Sidhu didn’t communicate Hunt’s appointment with her and believed Whatcom County Council was never told the full picture of the hiring.
“This whole thing is the biggest mess I have ever been involved in,” Kazymyra said. “I took the job of hiring the medical examiner very seriously. It’s a huge responsibility to be a medical examiner. After this happened, I was so disappointed.”
After the hiring, Holmes said the medical society requested a meeting with the executive to discuss the transition process. During the meeting, some participants expressed concern about the process, but they did not accuse the executive of violating the county charter, he wrote.
Following Hunt’s release, Whatcom County began recruiting on August 5 for a medical examiner with a $330,000 salary. This time, the county started with a nationwide search, including on the National Association of Medical Examiners website, and has already received several applicants from out-of-state candidates.
“I think [the county] has learned,” Garavaglia said. “But you can’t blame them because they had no experience because it was a private enterprise for over 30 years … It’s a little bit of a different model than most medical examiner’s offices run in the country.”
Whatcom County contracted its services for a medical examiner’s office with Goldfogel and Hunt, who was helping the county transition the office to become a county office. The new medical examiner will be a county employee, which both Holmes and Garavaglia believe will attract more forensic pathologists to the position.
“Most medical examiners are not going to move and start a company in a new town they’re not familiar with, but they will take a new position in a new town,” said Garavaglia, who agreed to be on the interview panel again.
As for Kazymyra and Goldfogel, both said the hiring decision left them feeling sour toward Sidhu. Kazymyra said she and other members of the medical society are considering bringing their concerns to Whatcom County Council during an upcoming meeting.
“He went behind our backs and on his own to hire her,” Kazymyra said. “Which made me question, ‘Why did you waste my time and everyone else’s time if you didn’t listen to the recommendations?’ How dare you go behind our backs and make [county council] think everything is on the up and up, and this was a wonderful choice.”
The article was updated August 15 with additional information from the Whatcom County Executive’s Office.
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