(NETWORK IN) Governor Holcomb is brushing off angry warnings from his departing Department of Child Services director:
In a blistering resignation letter made public by the Indianapolis Star, Mary Beth Bonaventura charges the administration has systematically slashed funding to the agency and damaged relationships with foster parents, placement agencies and treatment centers. She warns those steps “all but ensure children will die,” and says she’s leaving after Christmas rather than be “complicit.”
Holcomb says he wishes the former Lake County judge well, and says he shares her commitment to children’s well-being. He says the administration successfully lobbied for a nearly half-billion-dollar budget increase for D-C-S. But the governor declined to address directly Bonaventura’s charge that a chief of staff appointed by Holcomb has gone behind her back to block some of that money from being spent. She accuses Eric A. Miller of bullying employees and “brazen insubordination.”
Holcomb says he won’t engage in a “personnel back-and-forth.”
Then-governor Mike Pence named Bonaventura D-C-S director three weeks after taking office in 2013. Holcomb reappointed her when he became governor in January.