Former Sonoma County Health Services directors disagree on who hired DEMA

Former Sonoma County Health Department Director Barbie Robinson is facing increasing criticism over the hiring of DEMA Consulting & Management in Houston, where she is director of the Harris County Health Department.

The audit comes in the wake of the collapse of DEMA in Sonoma County and a Press Democrat investigation into questionable accounting and financial dealings of founder and former president Michelle Patino.

Robinson has sought to distance herself from the company, which provides emergency shelter and homeless services, and has blamed the fact that DEMA was originally a government contractor on her former deputy, Tina Rivera, who served as interim director and then director of Sonoma County Health Services until her resignation this month.

Rivera, however, tells a different story: He says Robinson was the first to suggest a collaboration with DEMA founder Michelle Patino.

Robinson left Sonoma County in May 2021 to take over as head of Harris County Public Health. DEMA followed her to Texas in July of that year when Robinson’s department contracted the company without a competitive bid to operate mobile health clinics during the pandemic.

On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Patino offered Robinson a consulting job at the company’s California office in September 2021, shortly before he submitted a bid for a new, multimillion-dollar contract in Houston. Robinson denied ever seeing the offer, which was contained in an email obtained by the Chronicle under public records disclosure laws.

“Based on our conversation, we would like to engage you as a consultant on some of the legal issues we may have in California,” Patino wrote to Robinson, later asking the health director in the email what fee she would charge.

Robinson did not respond to requests for comment from the Press Democrat on Wednesday. She told the Chronicle she has never worked for DEMA and has not exerted undue influence over its $6 million contract in Harris County, which provides non-police support to people in mental health crises.

“I don’t even know what conversation she (Patino) is referring to,” she told the Chronicle. “As I said, I have no personal relationship with her.”

DEMA won the Harris County contract over an established local provider. Robinson did not oppose the process and served on the panel that evaluated the proposals.

Patino also did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The Houston Chronicle’s report and Robinson’s response raise new questions about the relationship she and Rivera had with Patino and whether that relationship influenced her decision-making regarding a company that didn’t exist before the pandemic but billed Sonoma County alone for more than $27 million.

The Press Democrat had previously reported on Rivera’s attendance at an August 2021 party at Patino’s Santa Rosa home, shortly after the company moved to Texas. A government ethics expert questioned the appropriateness of Rivera’s attendance, and the events of that party were at the center of a sexual harassment lawsuit by a DEMA employee that continues to this day.

In the meantime, the Sonoma County Health Department The oversight of DEMA appears to have been more inadequate than ever.

In March, an accounting firm hired by Sonoma County found that DEMA had improperly accounted for about 40% of its invoices. Nevertheless, the department approved the invoices and the county paid them.

Since then, The Press Democrat has documented other billing irregularities, including the fact that Patino regularly billed for 22-hour days between Harris and Sonoma counties. On one day, she billed Sonoma County for work on a Sunday, even though social media posts showed she was in Colorado at a Denver Broncos game.

But since the report released in March by accounting firm Pisenti & Brinker, neither the Sonoma County Health Department, the Audit Office, nor the county government have announced any new investigations into whether and to what extent the company may have misused taxpayer funds.

In her response to the Chronicle, Robinson attempted to downplay her past with the Sonoma County company, telling the Texas newspaper that it was her deputy director, Rivera, who brought DEMA into the company. Robinson described herself as “not very involved in the company’s work” in Sonoma County, according to the Chronicle.

But in a March 2023 interview, before DEMA came under scrutiny as part of a Press Democrat investigation, Rivera described DEMA CEO Patino coming to Sonoma County Health Services through a path that began with Robinson.