A former state public health department employee has been fined $500 for taking on outside work that compromised her independence to properly conduct her state job, ethics investigators say.
Mary Keating, of Middlebury, formerly worked for the state Department of Public Health (DPH), as coordinator of the agency’s hospital preparedness program, the Office of State Ethics said Wednesday.
According to ethics investigators, Keating, while on the DPH payroll, accepted in June 2013 a per diem post in the emergency department at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury.
Her DPH job, however, made her partly responsible for oversight of St. Mary’s participation in the hospital preparedness program. That put her DPH job and her work for St. Mary’s in conflict, impairing her judgment to perform her state duties, a breach of state ethics rules, investigators said.
Investigators said Keating acknowledged in a stipulation and consent order contacting the Office of State Ethics for advice two months before, in April 2013, and believed that the advice she received allowed her to take the position at St. Mary’s.
Keating could not be immediately reached Wednesday for comment.
The Office of State Ethics said it was prepared to argue at a probable cause hearing that Keating’s “interpretation of the advice was misplaced, and that the advice clearly prohibited her from accepting the position,’’ OSE Executive Director Carol Carson said in a statement.
“The outside employment of state employees cannot compromise their duty to the state,” Carson said.
