August 21, 2017 at 11:33 a.m.
County OKs deputy medical examiner
Mathein says position was victim of politics
County OKs deputy medical examiner
By Richard Moore-
The work load, new reporting requirements, the need for his official signature on death certificates, the lack of reliable back up - these and other things keep medical examiner Larry Mathein pretty much on duty most of the time, and this week he asked the county's public safety committee to establish a chief deputy medical examiner to ease some of the burden.
"Basically what I'm asking for is somebody to be me so that I don't have to be me seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Mathein said.
The committee obliged by voting to approve the request and to send it to the labor relation and employee services committee for further review.
In his presentation, Mathein reminded the committee that Oneida County once had a chief deputy medical examiner, but it was eliminated in 2009 because of what he called politics.
"The problem with having that eliminated is that the state actually requires us as a county to have a medical examiner and an assistant," he said. "Just like with a coroner, you have to have a chief deputy, and most counties refer to that as the chief deputy medical examiner. The reason for that is, it has to be somebody who can act officially in your stead for signing documents and having the authority to act as the medical examiner."
The state's death certificate program offers up the quintessential example of where that need comes into play, Mathein said .
"We can't have anybody signing a death certificate if it is not either the medical examiner or the chief deputy," he said. "We don't have one of those. So for the last five-plus years I've done all of it. If I'm out of town - which most of you well know has not occurred yet - but, if I go on a vacation, nobody in our county can sign death certificates."
Previously, Mathein said, the position was a salaried one, and that position shared some responsibilities and undertook some office duties.
More than a Hancock
It's just not signatures, either, Mathein said. There is a need for people to fill in for him in his job duties if he is sick or on vacation.
"So I would like to bring this forward because basically what's going on is, as the medical examiner, I have investigators who work for me," he said. "They are all part-time people. They are all people who have other jobs. It's very hard to keep people like that - it's almost impossible to get them trained and keep them - because really there's not a lot of money in that."
And because it is fluid whether personnel will be kept for one year or two, Mathein said it's almost impossible to get somebody to do his job so he could even go out of town.
"In the last five-and-a-half years, I have taken three three-day vacations to go see family because any longer than that I can't find anybody to cover me," he said. "People would then have to take off of their regular jobs to work for me. If I am sick and can't get into the office, we have nobody to do that."
Currently, Mathein said, his investigators are on call at certain points but that sometimes proves problematic. He said one investigator had called that very morning to say he wouldn't be able to handle his 7 p.m. to 7 a.m on-call shift because his side job had called and offered him overtime.
"So guess who is working tonight? Larry," he said, referring to himself. "Because how can I tell the guy, 'no, you can't go make $150.'"
Mathein said he met with Oneida County LRES director Lisa Charbarneau and the two of the them reviewed the position's original job descriptions. They cleaned them up and settled on a half-time slot for 975 hours a year, starting July 1, 2018.
The fiscal impact to the county would be $12,510. The position would be salaried and receive per diems for death scene work; Mathien does not receive such per diems.
Mathein also said a person who now does data entry for his department could fill the bill, having recently completed death investigation school and the practicals she needed to get certified, and he said she is willing to do the job, should she be the person selected.
Mathein said he was also looking long term, whoever gets the position.
"I'm getting a little bit older and I'm not going to be doing this job forever," he said. "So it's somebody hopefully that when I decide not to do this full time anymore can just move right into it."
Mathein cited Marathon County as an example of his needs: He said the case load there was two-and-a-half-times that of Oneida County.
"They are now hiring their fourth full-time person because they cannot get part-time people to be reliable to do this anymore and to have the training and the skills," he said. "It's getting tougher and tougher."
In addition, Mathein said, the federal Department of Justice has just initiated a new program for drug reporting on deaths that didn't exist before.
"There are a lot of things, and it is getting more and more intricate," he said. "Our loads are increasing."
Mathein said data entry alone takes 10 to 15 hours a month.
Supervisor Billy Fried worried about the long-term implications, given the county's discussion with Vilas County to provide contractual services there as they do in Forest County.
"I'm concerned that we understand the whole picture because I don't know what's on the horizon with possibly your services being expanded into another county," Fried said.
He wondered if there might be two chief deputies down the road.
Mathein said no, but per diem investigators would increase, and he also clarified that the request was for 2018 only. If services are provided to Vilas County, they would start Jan. 1, 2019, unless their coroner leaves the position sooner.
Richard Moore is the author of The New Bossism of the American Left and can be reached at www.rmmoore1.com.
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