City loses federal help for MPS lead contamination probe after mass layoffs announced by RFK Jr.

Yahoo

03-04-2025

The Milwaukee Health Department has lost the help of federal employees who were helping with lead contamination investigations at Milwaukee Public Schools.
They were swept up in recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the city's health commissioner said.
The employees, part of a division that focuses on lead poisoning prevention, were helping the city create a plan for mass testing of school children for lead, Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
They also had been on hand to help with technical questions arising during the investigation.
The investigation started in January when it was found a child with lead poisoning had been exposed to lead-based paint at Golda Meir Lower Campus.
The investigation has since expanded to more MPS schools, with seven identified as having lead hazards. A few schools were ordered closed for lead remediation.
Totoraitis was notified Tuesday of the layoffs. The employees were part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health within HHS, he said.
"To know that I can't call those staff anymore is really concerning," he said.
It's also unclear what will happen with a request from the city to the CDC for Epi-Aid. That refers to experts the CDC would send to Milwaukee on a short-term basis to provide on-scene help.
The Health Department put in the request on March 26, seeking help with the lead investigations, said spokesperson Caroline Reinwald.
The request is pending. Totoraitis indicated he doesn't have much hope it will be fulfilled.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced plans to cut 10,000 employees at the federal agency.
He also announced an overhaul of the department that included consolidating its 28 divisions into 15 and closing some regional offices. National news outlets have reported that entire divisions or programs within HHS were shuttered when all their employees were laid off.
"The administrative realignment is not affecting critical regional and national efforts; instead, it is focused on eliminating redundancies and improving program efficiency," HHS Press Secretary Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano said in a statement.
The layoffs come in the midst of federal funding cuts to state and local health departments. HHS agencies sent them notices cancelling billions of dollars in COVID-era grant funding.
The Milwaukee Health Department expects to lose about $5 million in funding tied to four canceled grants, Totoraitis said. Most of the funds were meant to last through mid-2026.
Under one of the grants, the department had planned to launch a new neighborhood nursing program with part of the $2.7 million in remaining, unspent funds.
That program would have placed public health nurses and social workers in neighborhoods to support preventive care. Totoraitis said the department will be forced to scale back those plans and look for funding elsewhere to support the program.
Wisconsin is one of nearly two dozen states suing HHS and Kennedy over the grant cancellations. The state say HHS went beyond its authority in arbitrarily canceling funding that Congress had already appropriated.
The Health Department still plans to test thousands of MPS students for lead, with priority given to children at the ages and in the schools most at-risk, Totoraitis said.
With the CDC increasingly "taking a back seat," Totoraitis said the department would rely on its local and state partners to address lead poisoning and other public health issues.
Reporter Alison Dirr, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff, contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee loses federal help on lead probe after RFK Jr. fires workers