Marin health agency director to depart in December

The director of the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services will leave the post by the end of the year.

Benita McLarin is the first African American leader of the agency, which is by far the largest department of the county government. Its director oversees the expenditure of 33% of the county’s $784 million all-funds budget.

In a letter to the Board of Supervisors to announce her retirement plan, McLarin said she had “mixed emotions, sadness and joy.”

“After over 43 years of combined government service, a long, rewarding and sometimes arduous career, it is time to look to the next chapter for my life in service,” she wrote.

The county has not named a successor. County Administrator Hymel said it is likely that an interim director will be tapped to oversee the department until a new director is named.

McLarin is among several prominent county figures whose departures are in the works. Katie Rice, who has been a Marin County supervisor for more than a decade, announced in May that she wouldn’t seek re-election and will retire from the board when her term ends in January 2025. In July, Hymel broke the news that he plans to retire in the first quarter of 2024.

McLarin could not be reached for comment. In an email, she listed what she considers to be her major accomplishments during her more than four years as director, including “implementing the HHS Strategic Plan to Achieve Health and Wellness Equity with a focus on becoming an antiracist organization,” and “advancing an equity agenda in HHS and the larger county.”

Reporting to supervisors in February 2021, McLarin said, “These efforts reflect our belief that racism is a public health and social crisis.”

“Across the United States and here in Marin County, structural and institutional racism is a root cause of unjust inequities in all facets of life — jobs, income, housing, education, etc.,” McLarin said. “These inequities lead to disparities across multiple health and well-being outcomes.”

At the time, McLarin said the most consequential action her department had taken so far was to educate its employees about their own racial bias.

Thirty of the department’s top executives attended monthly labs to expand their “capacity to create and lead an anti-racist organization,” McLarin said at the time. Also, the department’s social services division staff participated in a three-day training on “racial sobriety.”

The department is seeking to replace its equity manager, Elyse Rainey, who left in August. The salary range for the position is listed as $114,000 to $137,820 a year. The equity manager will coordinate initiatives with the county’s equity officer.

Twelve percent of the department’s 839 positions are unfilled, compared to a 10.7% vacancy rate across all departments, according to Josh Swedberg, the county’s budget director.

In other accomplishments, McLarin listed “keeping the HHS team together and supporting the community through COVID-19 and other emergencies.”

Hymel and several supervisors agreed with that appraisal.

“We were extremely fortunate to have someone with Benita’s skills and abilities to lead HHS during our COVID response,” Hymel wrote in an email.

Supervisor Mary Sackett wrote in an email that “Dr. McLarin provided a steady hand at the helm of Health and Human Services, guiding the department through a global pandemic and embedding equity into all the work the county does.”

Rice wrote in an email that “Dr. McLarin has been with the county and led HH&S during such an incredibly challenging period and has done so with integrity, clarity and calm.”

Supervisor Dennis Rodoni wrote, “Benita was a great fit, with her military and medical backgrounds, as she guided the county through difficult public health emergencies while being flexible to new ideas and new collaborations.”

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, McLarin enlisted in the U.S. Army when she was in high school and spent 25 years in the service before moving on to hold leadership positions with a number of health systems.

Immediately before coming to Marin in 2019, McLarin worked for more than five years as the chief operating officer of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Before joining the center, she was a vice president for the Alameda Health System and held managerial positions at the health departments of Sonoma and Solano counties.

McLarin also included among her accomplishments “reducing homelessness in Marin, housing several hundred formerly unhoused, and advancing multiple HomeKey projects to completion.”

McLarin continued implementation of the county’s “housing first” policy, which was put into place prior to her arrival, and helped to facilitate the application, approval and construction of three HomeKey projects. The county’s Community Development Agency also played a prominent role in the opening of the HomeKey sites.

Not all was smooth sailing during McLarin’s tenure.

After McLarin pulled the county out of a program that used mostly Federal Emergency Management Agency and state money to pay local restaurants to deliver meals to seniors of modest income in 2020, supervisors directed her to rethink her priorities, and the county rejoined the program.

McLarin also ran into stiff opposition when she attempted to mandate that the county’s Alcohol and Drug Advisory Board merge with its Mental Health Board. Board members opposing the merger, mostly members of the drug board, said the two panels addressed unique needs and should remain autonomous.

McLarin resisted when a study commissioned by the county and a Marin County Civil Grand Jury report recommended that the county create a division focused solely on aging and disability. Instead, McLarin began allowing Lee Pullen, who oversees aging and adult services for the county, to attend monthly meetings of her department’s executive team. The executive team consists of Marin’s public health officer and the heads of the department’s three divisions focused on social services, behavioral health and homelessness.

McLarin, whose annual salary is $302,868, will be eligible for a pension from the Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association, even though she has been a county employee for fewer than five years.

“In order to be eligible to retire a members must have at least 5 years of MCERA service or have a combination of MCERA service and service from another reciprocal employer retirement system (like CalPERS) that totals five years,” Jeff Wickman, the association’s administrator, wrote in an email.