Sonoma County Auditor Conducted 'Independent' Investigation of DEMA Despite Wife's Role as DHS Procurement Chief

Treasurer Erick Roeser's wife was employed as the County's Health Services Dept. Deputy Chief of Procurement alongside former Health Director Barbie Robinson

Last year, DEMA Consulting and Management, a Sonoma County contractor, became the subject of an FBI investigation related to possibly double billing for work on homeless services.

Per ABC 13:

Barbie Robinson, the former Sonoma County health services director who first negotiated the DEMA contract, is facing felony bid-rigging charges.

She was employed with the County of Sonoma as the Director of Health Services through April 2021. She resigned in May 2021 to take a new position as Executive Director of Harris County Public Health.

Robinson is accused of helping to award an $8 million contract to a one-person California firm known as DEMA (Disaster Emergency Medical Assistance) Consulting & Management to assist with the county's program known as Holistic Assistance Response Teams (HART).

In that case, DEMA's owner allegedly offered Robinson a job to do legal work in California and offered her husband a consulting job.

Robinson was terminated from Harris County Public Health in August after questions were raised in a Houston Chronicle report.

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Per a July 2023 article in The Press Democrat:

Sonoma County’s elected financial watchdog will review three years of records for a company that billed $26 million through county contracts to run temporary housing sites during and after the pandemic, auditor Erick Roeser told The Press Democrat on Monday.

His office’s investigation will be independent from a review by the Department of Health Services, which made DEMA Consulting and Management one if its principal emergency contractors through the pandemic.

Roeser and his staff will review invoices and supporting documentation the company provided the health department since June 2020. The company had billed more than $26 million by April 2023, all through contracts began during the pandemic and initiated without a competitive bid process.

Both Roeser’s office and officials with the Department of Health Services said they would begin financial reviews of DEMA’s contracts and billing following a Press Democrat investigation that first published Wednesday and identified $800,000 in billing for positions nine former and current health care workers at the company do not remember existing.

“What we do in my office will be wholly independent from what Health Services is doing,” Roeser said in a phone interview Monday.

Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Coursey said Roeser’s audit was an “appropriate” response to the newspaper’s investigation.

“Questions have been raised and they need to be answered,” Coursey said.

“It’s not that I don’t think these contracts have had oversight and will continue to have oversight, but the specific allegations made in the story need to be looked at,” he said.

Roeser has practically “full, free, and unrestricted access” to county government records, according to his agency’s charter. However, he has more limited authority to request internal DEMA documentation that isn’t required by oversight clauses of county contracts.

Still, he told The Press Democrat on Monday he believed his office had the authority and ability to get to the bottom of the questions the newspaper’s investigation raised about DEMA’s billing practices.

“It will come down to what documentation is available and what we’re allowed to look at, what the vendor is required to provide to the county,” he said. “I don’t want to speak out of turn and say we will perform work that we will not be able to but (answering questions raised in the newspaper’s investigation) will be the objective.”

DEMA, founded in May 2020, grew at a rapid pace over the first two years of the pandemic as the health department hired it to run an increasing number of sites to house vulnerable homeless people and provide them medical care.

It ultimately managed seven sites, and continues to run three, including the county’s newest, a managed encampment opened in March on the county administration campus in Santa Rosa. DEMA was hired for all of the sites under emergency orders.

The Board of Supervisors has not awarded any of those contracts through a vote because they were reached outside of a formal competitive bidding process. Coursey on July 6 told The Press Democrat he was not aware of the amount of money the company had billed for or the details of the contracts before the newspaper’s inquiry.

The Press Democrat reviewed 26 months of the company’s invoices and interviewed 12 former and current DEMA employees. The newspaper’s reporting of $800,000 in questionable billing focused on a single position, the director of nursing, for which DEMA billed between $76 and $95 an hour.

The company typically billed for about 12 positions, ranging from paramedics to infectious disease nurses to administrative positions like medical record and payroll technicians, at the local sites where it provided health care and managed housing for homeless people medically vulnerable to COVID-19.

From August 2020 to October 2022, DEMA billed more than $1.5 million for more than 18,930 director of nursing hours across the seven sites. There are approximately 18,980 hours in 26 months, meaning the company billed for directors of nursing working all but 50 of those hours, according to a Press Democrat calculation…

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Per her LinkedIn profile, Ms. Kim Roeser, spouse of Treasurer Erick Roeser, was employed with the County of Sonoma’s health services department as the Dept. Analyst / Deputy Chief - Procurement from October 2020 to May 2021.

She was responsible for the following:

• Procure non-medical goods and services for county wide COVID-19 response as part of emergency incident command structure for the Health Services - Dept. Operation Center Logistics.
• Expertly source vendors, place orders, arrange/confirm deliveries and track all details.
• Impeccably maintain auditable documentation in compliance with government and FEMA disaster structure requirements using DOC Logistics folder structure and proprietary software.
• Assist in set up, break down and ongoing support for county wide programs: Alternative Care Sites/Non-Congregate Shelters for COVID-19 positive/vulnerable populations, COVID-19 Testing and Contract Tracing units, Vaccine Operations unit and public Point of Distribution Sites

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Although I have requested clarification regarding this potential conflict of interest for the past year, the County of Sonoma refuses to respond to my inquiries.

Yesterday, I sent the following email to the attention of Sonoma County and Harris County officials:

Good Afternoon Treasurer Roeser,

As a media request, I am requesting responses to the following:

• Your spouse, Ms. Kim Roeser, appeared to be employed as a Dept. Analyst / Deputy Chief of Procurement for the County of Sonoma Department of Health Services from October 2020 - May 2021. Why was this position not reported on your SEI's? Ms. Roeser does not appear within Transparent California, so one would presume she was employed through a staffing agency. Why did she depart at the exact same time as former DHS Director Barbie Robinson?

• Being that your spouse was the Chief of Procurement at the time the DEMA contracts were established, do you find it to be a conflict as you conduct an independent audit of the DEMA contracts? Why has there been no mention of your wife's position with the County as the investigation moves forward?

• Were you aware that County Administrator Tina Rivera and her spouse, Assistant County Treasurer Jonathan Kadlec were employed simultaneously in their respective capacities during the DEMA procurement process? Do you find a husband/wife to be leading the treasury and administration of the County of Sonoma collectively to be a conflict of interest? Should the public have blind faith in the county's leadership while the FBI investigates potential fraud regarding DEMA?

Thanks & God Bless.

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Kindest Regards,

Adina Flores

*I was able to find Ms. Roeser in Transparent California after searching the database today. She only populated when her maiden name, Torrilhon was included. Her position as Deputy Chief of Procurement does not populate within the database, solely as department analyst. Presumably, her income was captured from October - December 2020 as reflected below.

Ms. Torrilhon Roeser seems to be handed employment opportunities based on her family legacy. Her father appeared to be the Exalted Ruler of the Elks Lodge, as well as the official Historian for the state of CA.

‘Secret’ societies appear to rule our entire government, but surely this is coincidental on every single occurrence that I have encountered over the past five years of research.

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As the FBI’s investigation continues to move forward, were other County employees and/or contractors complicit in fraud?

Proverbs 1:17–19
For in vain is a net spread
in the sight of any bird,
but these men lie in wait for their own blood;
they set an ambush for their own lives.
Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain;
it takes away the life of its possessors.

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