State prison healthcare czar is fired
A federal judge cites Robert Sillen's clashes with officials and the slow pace of change as reasons for his ouster.
SACRAMENTO -- — A federal judge Wednesday abruptly fired the man he had appointed to fix the multimillion-dollar problems of medical care in the state's prisons, after determining the effort was moving too slowly and in too confrontational a manner.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson revoked the power he had given Robert Sillen and handed it to J. Clark Kelso, a lawyer with experience turning around government institutions in crisis.
In an interview Wednesday, Kelso said Sillen had created a set of plans "that were so voluminous that it was very difficult for people to get their arms around them." He said he would craft a "strategic business plan" in an effort to return prison medical care to state control within four years.
Legal affairs secretary: In Thursday's California section, a story about the firing of state prison health czar Robert Sillen identified Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary as Andrew Lynn Hoch. Her name is Andrea Lynn Hoch.
"We are going to clearly identify what it is we are going to do," Kelso said. "We want to do only those things that are really necessary to bring healthcare services up to a constitutional level. We want to have deadlines, some milestones."
Sillen declined to comment Wednesday.
Henderson had appointed Sillen nearly two years ago, giving him broad powers to run prison healthcare and order additional spending in the state's overcrowded, understaffed medical wards. The order came as part of a case in which the judge had ruled that medical conditions violated prisoners' constitutional rights and had excoriated state officials for failing to fix a medical system so broken that an average of one inmate was dying every six or seven days because of poor care.
Since taking the post, formally known as the receiver, Sillen has dramatically increased state spending on prison medical care, largely by bringing salaries up to market levels. Sillen added about $300 million a year and sought to add another $500 million in next year's budget. In addition, he requested more than $800 million for new construction over several years and was working on a $3-billion plan for 5,000 long-term medical beds, state officials said.
But he also frequently clashed with others in his orbit. He jousted with lawmakers and froze out lawyers for inmates. He suggested he should also control the hiring of prison guards, and he blasted the $7.7-billion prison reform package approved by the Legislature last year as a bad idea.
Henderson praised some aspects of Sillen's tenure, saying he had "successfully used his unique skills and bold, creative leadership style to investigate, confront and break down many of the barriers that existed at the inception of the receivership."
