After far too long, the state’s Department of Veterans Affairs appears finally to have made a wise choice in a solid administrator for its beleaguered Fayetteville Veterans Home.
Kriss Schaffer, the former owner/ manager of the often-honored Greenhurst Nursing Center in Charleston, will assume the reins of leadership at the home. I’ve written previously about Schaffer’s strong sense of empathy and caring for the residents of his former nursing home that even the most demanding of critics say was the best in Arkansas.
I’m speaking primarily, of course, about Martha Deaver of Conway, the firebrand advocate for nursing-home residents who has been nationally recognized for many efforts and a sustained insistence on quality care.
Schaffer, for me, is exactly the kind of hands-on, personally involved administrator needed to turn the Fayetteville home around and set its sails toward a much more positive direction. Our veterans deserve nothing less than a person of Schaffer’s proven sense of skill and compassion in a largely corporate-controlled industry beset for decades by its own shortcomings, usually sparked by callousness and profit-mongering.
I asked Deaver, who has publicized the Fayetteville home’s documented serious deficiencies for many months, how she feels about this appointment.
“I’m pleased to hear a person of such high caliber, capability and competence has been named,” she said. “It’s my observation only a handful of nursing homes are operated with compassion, competence and a priority focused on the needs and care of their residents. Schaffer and his family have owned and managed the Greenhurst Center for decades in a way that puts it head and shoulders above any other facility in Arkansas. It’s one ofthe best in the nation.”
Deaver said she was pleased that state Veterans Affairs Director Cissy Rucker and Deputy Director Charles Johnson finally addressed two years of repeated abuse, neglect and substandard care that has been the norm at the Fayetteville home. “They have been primarily responsible for creating [the problems] through their tolerance and promoting incompetent individuals to the senior management positions.”
“Apparently, with the November termination of the home’s administrator, the state’s DVA leaders finally looked at the 1,500 pages of documented regulatory violations my colleagues and I compiled that they have always had copies of, which clearly show Mark Diggs (director of the Arkansas Military Veterans Hall of Fame) and I never had an alleged personal vendetta against the Fayetteville administration in calling for their termination,” said Deaver.
Now Deaver and Diggs await a public apology from Johnson for his allegation. I told you she’s a firebrand.More deficit rehash
Yawn, another hearing day. Several state legislators undoubtedly will posture for the media in recounting various perspectives and agendas surrounding the re-rehashed $4 million budgeting errors made by former employees of the Advancement Division at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Witnesses the likes of Brad Choate,who once was paid a whopping $350,000 annually to ensure such deficits didn’t occur on his watch (and who wasn’t retained when the university determined he failed in that responsibility) will again do his darnedest to point fingers of blame elsewhere.
He and Joy Sharp, Choate’s former budgeting officer who repeatedly has admitted the budgeting mistakes largely were hers rather than Choate’s, will relive the experiences that also rightfully cost her position. No money ever was missing or improperly spent in this deficit problem. In fact, I understand Choate actually inherited a surplus of more than $500,000 when he assumed management of the Advancement Division.
Chancellor David Gearhart, who has strongly refuted allegations by another former UA administrator, John Diamond, that Gearhart ever ordered any FOI’d documents destroyed (and that at least one prosecutor already has found no evidence that accusation was true) will again deny the allegations.
These regrettable budgeting errors have been determined to have stemmed primarily from the division prematurely hiring for the school’s coming fundraising campaign. The overhiring extended the division well beyond its budget.
Gearhart, under whose leadership the University of Arkansas has grown and flourished in every conceivable way, remains an easy target politically because of his position, and as former head of the Advancement Division until 2008. In his previous post, he spearheaded the most successful fundraising campaign in university history that raised over $1 billion.
One reader recently asked why I haven’t jumped on the “he-said-but-he-said” bandwagon in attempts to roast Gearhart personally in a smoky media bonfire. Frankly, I have yet to see any solid justification to assassinate a good leader’s character, or do anything but appreciate his forthright approach in handling such an unfortunate development. In other words, I accept the results of two audits and that prosecutor’s exhaustive investigation.
However, I just saw that graduateprograms.com just named the Walton School of Business as the nation’s ninth best graduate business school alongside the likes of Dartmouth and Ohio State! But I shamefully digress in overreacting to matters seemingly of much lesser significance to Arkansas. -
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 01/07/2014