CSB hires interim director [Virginian – Pilot]

By Patrick Wilson

The Virginian-Pilot

norfolk

A behavioral health consultant from Fairfax County has been hired as interim director of the Community Services Board.

Charles G. Ray, a principal of Criterion Health, will start Monday and work with Executive Director Maureen Womack, who is leaving at the end of the year for a job in Kansas.

The agency's board of trustees voted Tuesday to appoint Ray to the job after a discussion in closed session. The contract calls for him to receive a pro-rated salary based on $166,000 annually. He will not receive benefits such as health insurance, said Lewis J. Taylor, the board chairman, making Ray's overall compensation comparable to what Womack makes. She earns $115,000, plus health care and vacation and received a bonus this year of $21,700.

Ray will inherit an agency struggling with a $25 million budget. Programs may have to be cut and vacant positions left unfilled. In fact, today Womack and her team will consider whether to close the Therapeutic Learning Center on Tidewater Drive, a program for the mentally ill with a staff of about 10 that has lost clients and revenue.

Ray is no stranger to the CSB. His firm was paid about $12,000 in 2010 to consult on the agency's management practices.

Taylor said he's pleased to bring in Ray's expertise.

"It's intended to be brief. It's to solve a particular problem," Taylor said. "We were familiar with him."

Ray said he will face challenges of health care reform and changes in Virginia. "What I will do is continue the board's mandate to continue the improvements that are being done on clinical care, finance and billing," he said Tuesday night. "To look at the areas that still need to be enhanced in terms of productivity."

A search for a permanent director will continue.

The CSB remains plagued by lawsuits and investigations into how a former employee was paid for 12 years while on suspension. The payments happened during a previous director, but Womack fired her management staff over the scandal and four of them are suing her for defamation.

The CSB board voted on its new leadership, too. Board member Kenny Bryant was chosen as chairman starting Jan. 1. Taylor will remain on the board for the last year of his term, but said this fall that he was ready to turn leadership over to someone else.

Patrick Wilson, (757) 222-3893, patrick.wilson@pilotonline.com

Executive Director Maureen Womack is leaving at the end of the year for a job in Kansas.