Disgraced Former County HR Director Officially Resigns

The resignation of the former Bucks County Human Resources director was approved by the Bucks County Commissioners Wednesday evening during their meeting at Playwicki Park in Middletown.

Meredith Dolan, a resident of Warrington, was suspended from her position in June after a grand jury found her department botched some of their duties and cost taxpayers roughly $500,000. Her resignation was submitted July 10.

Dolan was hired to the job in 2009 and she was paid $82,000 at the time, according to a county release.

Commissioners Chairman Robert Loughery said another member of the HR staff had also resigned. He failed to disclose their name and whether it was connected to the department’s shortcomings.

County officials said this week that they were working to recoup some of the money wasted by the HR department’s lax work. At the commissioners meeting, it was reported about $41,000 has been returned by insurance providers so far.

Deputy Human Resources Director Travis Monroe is currently leading the department along with oversight from top county officials. A new director has yet to be hired.

A large county investigation originally focused on county employees who reportedly had dependents that were no longer eligible for heath care quickly turned to the work of the HR department. County Controller Ray McHugh told reporters last month that HR employees “repeatedly blamed county employees for failing to follow protocols that were never established or defined.” He said in some cases computer system glitches and other problems were blamed.

The grand jury said losses “could have been avoided by better HR practices and procedures.” Dolan was responsible for the department and its practices, officials said.

The grand jury reported details on the out-of-date HR department. According to the 76-page document, the department uses mostly paper records and relied on the “honor system” when handling dependent changes. The report said there was plenty of room for changes to “slip through the cracks.”

Dolan told commissioner Diane Marseglia via email in summer 2013 that HR takes “great pride” in maintaining and keeping up with dependent changes submitted by the county employees covered by county insurance, according to the grand jury report.

“Clearly, this investigation has found otherwise, as investigators found three time-stamped divorce decrees in the HR files for divorced employees who had asked that their spouses be removed from the coverage at the time of their divorce decrees,” the grand jury report states on page 27 in response to the email from Dolan to Marseglia.

The county released an extensive amount of paperwork that appeared to show thousands of money paid for insurance to cover those who should have no longer been on policies.

Officials from the county said changes to procedure have already been made to the department. Top county leaders are meeting with other similar-sized governments to see how they handle their HR.

Warminster resident Sandy Bauer, a nurse who retired from the Bucks County Department of Health in January, spoke at public comment about the HR department controversy. “Many of us encountered very angry taxpayers,” she told the commissioners. She also called on the Calkins Media newspaper – the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer – to apologize for publication content that seemed blamed county workers for trying to illegally get away with benefit fraud. She said taxpayers called county workers “crooks” and harassed following the reports.

Loughery and Marseglia both said the three commissioners had gone to the news organization, which has Bucks County offices in Doylestown and Tullytown, to explain the issue.

According to county officials, the newspapers wrote editorials that called the employees who were then determined to have ineligible dependents “thieves” that “stole the county’s money,” which further investigation found to be untrue.

Heckler said in June he was not pleased with the coverage and called it “malarkey.”

The HR department consists of eight full-time employees and one part-time worker. The office handles $41 million in insurance coverage for county employees and their dependents.