This story by Tommy Gardner was first published in the News & Citizen on Oct. 19.
Green Mountain Support Services no longer has to lean on another agency for support.
The Morrisville agency, which provides developmental services, adult family care and brain injury services for more than 120 people, was recently re-designated by the state, roughly half a year after the state threatened to shutter the agency for shoddy management practices.
The Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living had granted Green Mountain a reprieve, but only after Champlain Community Services offered to step up and work with the beleaguered agency to right the ship.
New executive director Elizabeth Walters described the past six months as “trying to fix the plane while you fly, while you build a newer version of it.”
She paused and added, “While flying through a hurricane.”
In a Sept. 13 letter to the Morristown agency, Monica White, commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, re-designated Green Mountain Support Services, writing that “service standards are being met, communication within GMSS and with community and state partners is solidly improved, and staff morale and attention to priorities are significantly better.”
The Morristown agency had been placed on “provisional designation” in October 2021 and had only made “intermittent progress” with the state’s requirements for continued operations, according to White, who issued a notice of de-designation for Green Mountain Support Services Feb. 27.
White cited a lack of appropriate financial management and oversight and a lack of communication with her department.
She said that Green Mountain in late 2021 formed a quality assurance department that was “poorly conceived and misguided” and headed up by two unnamed staffers who had “histories of non-responsiveness and failures to follow” the department’s guidance; hired a program manager despite the opposition of the organization’s own hiring committee; and ran afoul of the Department of Labor, which claimed Green Mountain was misclassifying some of its staff as contractors rather than employees.
White also said agency had been the subject of a Medicaid fraud investigation by the Vermont Attorney General’s office, and was in a “precarious financial situation,” with roughly $500,000 in debt, and would need access to cash reserves to make payroll.
Former executive director Josh Smith, whose resignation in early March helped White reconsider the de-designation, called the description of a debt-riddled agency “overblown,” saying Green Mountain is a $14 million agency and had 130 days of cash on hand.
White said she was happy she didn’t have to go through with her initial decision to de-designate the agency, because it would have been detrimental to the clients in the coverage area. People receiving services would have had to be transferred to one of the other 14 agencies, and the staff would have had to find work elsewhere, too.
“At the end of the day, my goal would have been to make sure that folks continued to receive services and transitioned in a way that was as mindful as possible to ensure continuation of services, but there’s no doubt about it, it would have certainly been disruptive,” she said.
White said she thinks, with the former leadership team, “there was always the intent to serve Vermonters well,” but they just didn’t have the ability to do everything required by the agency — she said there were deficiencies across the board, including data collection, quality assurance, communications, board composition, organizational structure, financial management and policies and procedures.
“Do I think that there was ever any intentionally malicious or fraudulent activity? I would say not,” White said. “I think the heart was there, but the ability to execute on the leadership of the organization might not have been.”
Walters, who has worked for Green Mountain Support Services since 2004, previously as the agency’s clinical director, said she had no idea “the depth of the mess” the place was in with the state.
“What I will say is the agency had paid woefully inadequate attention to Medicaid rules, to DAIL regulations and to the importance of compliance of those things,” she said. “The agency was not operating per the rules. Period.”
Walters, who was named Green Mountain’s permanent executive director last week, declined to talk about anyone in previous leadership roles but said the work Champlain Community Services performed to help right the ship was eye-opening. She referred to the agency the way it was being run as “a rogue actor,” but declined to name any names.
When she was promoted to interim executive director and worked with the Champlain Community Services team, the goal was to first go through and examine all the agency’s practices, good and bad.
“That was how we described it to staff, that we were going to turn over every rock and see what needs cleaning up and polishing and fixing,” Walters said. “And, man, we found so much stuff under rocks.”
Walters said most of the forward-facing staff stuck with Green Mountain, and morale has improved immensely from the previous few years. She said the folks at Champlain Community Services took a positive outlook with the temporary partnership, and it did not feel punitive.
“They took this very positive, mentoring, collaborative approach,” she said. “They’re absolutely lovely people.”
