Convicted supervisor was hired to work with mentally disabled by Wisconsin officials over experienced candidates

A state center for the mentally disabled had more than a dozen experienced candidates to choose from, but passed over them to hire a supervisor who has been investigated for four serious offenses and convicted of two over the past 11 years, records show.

The state had 12 applicants who had done work supervising staff at the Southern Wisconsin Center in Union Grove or at nearby state prisons and also had private-sector candidates such as a veteran, according to documents released to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel under the state’s open records law.

In addition, the longtime director of the Southern Wisconsin Center, James Henkes, was told Monday he is being reassigned by the Department of Health Services. Henkes helped interview the candidates for the job, which oversees care provided to vulnerable residents with developmental disabilities and in some cases mental illness.

Steve Anderson, the head of the committee for guardians and family of Southern Wisconsin Center residents, said he believes in the high quality of care being provided by the center but that he and other family members have been shaken by the supervisor's hire and now the reassignment of Henkes.

"We want the top (Health Services) echelon to ante up and say what is the deal with this?" Anderson said. "We just want them to clear the air."

Southern Wisconsin passed over the other candidates to hire Houston Jamison, a former supervisor in the state prison system. Jamison was convicted in 2014 of drunken driving and in 2008 of shooting a pistol into the floor during an argument the previous year with his then fiancée, the Journal Sentinel reported in September.

The state hired him for the job after determining that Jamison was only found guilty of civil violations and not of a crime.

Henkes is being transferred on Sunday to become the associate director of the state's Milwaukee enrollment office for programs such as food stamps, Health Services spokeswoman Julie Lund said. The moves comes a little over a month after the newspaper reported on the Southern Wisconsin hire. Lund, who said an interim superintendent for Southern Wisconsin is still being chosen, did not directly address whether Jamison's hiring played a role in the decision.

"This reassignment was done to utilize (Henkes') experience ... to ensure the programs’ outcomes and objectives are coordinated in a systematic and cohesive way," Lund said.

Henkes, whose salary is not changing, referred questions to Lund. Calls made to Jamison's unit at Southern Wisconsin were not answered.

The agency responsible for Southern Wisconsin, the Department of Health Services, initially denied an open records request for the résumés of other candidates for the unit supervisor's job but then released them after the Journal Sentinel pointed out that state law contains no blanket exemptions for withholding that kind of personnel record.

The records showed that Henkes, his deputy, Michelle Bradley Glenn, and the center's social services director, Kathy Blizzard, interviewed 16 potential candidates. Among them:

• Seven resident care supervisors at Southern Wisconsin who work under unit supervisors, the job being filled, and the center's building and grounds supervisor, the coordinator of its discipline process and a treatment professional there.
• A unit supervisor within at the Racine Correctional Institution as well as a complaint examiner and a teacher there.
• A supervising officer at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility.
• A program coordinator at Lake Forest Hospital in Illinois.
• A field operations coordinator for Google Maps who was also an Iraq War veteran. 

The records included emails in which Health Services employees shared a Journal Sentinel article detailing Jamison's rise within the Department of Corrections despite repeated interactions with law enforcement.

In 2007, Jamison was arrested for reckless endangerment after his then-fiancée said he shot a pistol into the floor during an argument, the records show. Jamison ultimately pleaded guilty, completed a deferred prosecution agreement and was convicted of disorderly conduct. In July 2014, Jamison was convicted of driving while intoxicated the previous month, court records show.

Jamison also was investigated but not charged for breaking an inmate's finger in a cell door food slot at the Racine Youthful Offender Correctional Facility and for allegedly groping a co-worker at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility.

In a Feb. 27 email, Health Services human resource worker Matthew Wallock told a Southern Wisconsin official the disorderly conduct and first-time drunken driving cases were considered civil fines.

"They were only forfeitures, which are not criminal. Therefore, we cannot consider them under the (Wisconsin Fair Employment Act)," Wallock wrote in an email.

That didn't satisfy Mitchell Hagopian, an attorney with Disability Rights Wisconsin, who wrote Health Services officials last month questioning whether Jamison had the "necessary temperament" for the challenging job.

The state's Lund responded that the hire followed a "competitive recruitment, including interviews of 16 top candidates, as well as a review of his background check, employee file and criminal history, and a reference check."