Former Sonoma County Health Director Barbie Robinson is facing intense scrutiny over her hiring of Houston-based DEMA Consulting & Management as Harris County public health director.
The investigation follows the collapse of Sonoma County's DEMA and a Press Democrat investigation into questionable billing and finances by the company's founder and former president, Michelle Patino.
Robinson has sought to distance himself from the company, which provided emergency housing and homeless services, and has argued that DEMA's government contracts trace their origins to former deputy director Tina Rivera, who served as interim director and then Sonoma County health commissioner until she resigned this month.
But Rivera told a different story, saying it was Robinson who first suggested working with DEMA founder Michelle Patino.
Robinson left Sonoma County in May 2021 to become Harris County public health director. In July of that year, DEMA followed Robinson to Texas, where his department hired the company under a no-bid contract to run mobile clinics during the pandemic.
The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that Patino offered Robinson a consulting position for the company's California operations just before submitting a proposal for a new multimillion-dollar contract in Houston in September 2021. Robinson denied ever seeing the offer, which was conveyed in emails obtained by the Chronicle under public records laws.
“Based on our discussions, I would like you to work with me as a consultant on some potential legal issues in California,” Patino wrote to Robinson, later in the email asking how much he would charge the health commissioner.
Robinson did not respond to Press Democrat's request for comment Wednesday. He told the Chronicle he has never worked for DEMA and has never improperly influenced the agency's $6 million contract to provide non-law enforcement responses in Harris County to people experiencing mental health crises.
“I don't even know what conversations she (Patino) is referring to,” she told the Chronicle. “As I said, I have no personal relationship with her.”
DEMA won the Harris County contract over established local vendors, and Robinson did not recuse himself from the process, serving on the committee that evaluated the proposals.
Patino also did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Houston Chronicle's report and Robinson's response raise new questions about her relationships with Rivera and Patino and whether those relationships, which did not exist before the pandemic, influenced decision-making about a company that has billed Sonoma County alone for more than $27 million.
The Press Democrat previously reported that Rivera attended a party at Patino's Santa Rosa home in August 2021, shortly after the company relocated to Texas. Government ethics experts have questioned the appropriateness of Rivera's attendance, and events at that party are at the center of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a DEMA employee that continues to this day.
Meanwhile, the Sonoma County Health Department's oversight of DEMA appears more seriously flawed than ever.
In March, an accounting firm hired by Sonoma County found that DEMA had not properly accounted for about 40% of its bills, but the agency still approved the bills and the county paid them.
Since then, the Press Democrat has documented other billing irregularities, including the fact that Patino regularly claimed 22-hour days between Harris and Sonoma counties. One day, she claimed to have worked a Sunday in Sonoma County, even though social media posts revealed she was in Colorado attending a Denver Broncos game.
But since the March report by accounting firm Pisenti & Brinker, officials from the Sonoma County Health Department, the Auditor's Office and the County Administrator's Office have not announced any new investigations into whether and to what extent the company misused taxpayer money.
In her response to the Chronicle, Robinson sought to downplay Sonoma County's history with the company, telling the Texas paper that it was her deputy director, Rivera, who brought in DEMA. Robinson said she was “not heavily involved in the company's work” in Sonoma County, according to the Chronicle.
But in a March 2023 interview, before scrutiny of DEMA began following the Press Democrat investigation, Rivera said Patino, DEMA's CEO, came to work for Sonoma County Health Services via a history that began with Robinson.
