Los Angeles Supervisors Name Interim County Health Director

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors yesterday appointed veteran county health department manager Fred Leaf to fill the "troubled" department's interim director position, replacing outgoing director Mark Finucane, the Los Angeles Times reports. Leaf currently serves as Finucane's chief of staff and has previously worked as the agency's head of internal investigations. On June 30, Leaf will take over an agency "that is almost perpetually in crisis, has lost many of its top managers during the last year and faces a projected deficit of more than $800 million in five years," the Times reports. After a "stormy five-year tenure," during which county supervisors criticized him for failing to cut the department's budget, Finucane resigned last month. County-USC Medical Center Head Roberto Rodriguez, who leaves his post in June, and the county's top medical officer, Dr. Donald Thomas, who resigned last August "amid fallout from a scandal involving the county's relationship with a bankrupt chain of public health clinics," join Finucane as top county health officials who have left the agency recently (Riccardi, Los Angeles Times, 4/11).