Nice Gig If You Can Get It
Dr. Richard Carmona made $132,678 over 273 hours of work in the past year as a senior health advisor to Gov. Doug Ducey and the state health department.
Gov. Doug Ducey appointed Dr. Richard Carmona as a senior health advisor on August 26, 2021 and in the year since he was named to that role, Carmona has worked minimally at a $486 hourly rate of taxpayer money.
Records from the Arizona Department of Health Services, where the former U.S. Surgeon General was working under acting director Don Herrington, show Carmona has only worked 273 hours in 12 months based on his weekly invoices. At his high hourly rate, that still earned him six figures even though in the past year Carmona simply did not work for 15 of the 51 weeks this request centered on.1
273 hours is the equivalent of 6-7 traditional work weeks. Carmona was hired through a company called Knowledge Services, an Indianapolis-based firm that has a temporary services contract with the state.
He has only worked a total of 5 hours since May 1 and none since July 3.
Steve Elliott, an AZDHS spokesman, told Fourth Estate 48 that Carmona is “still under contract” but “With COVID-19 currently creating much less strain on Arizona's health care system, first responders and other resources, there is currently less need for Dr. Carmona's assistance.”
However, when he was announced in his advisory role, it was supposed to be on “public health emergency preparedness and lead a statewide effort to boost vaccine and public health awareness in Arizona,” according to the joint release from the Ninth Floor and the state health department.
While the pandemic, which of course is still ongoing, may be “creating much less strain” on the health care system, there has not been any active campaigns or public service announcements regarding vaccines (save for the occasional tweet), part of Carmona’s alleged duties.
Arizona also stopped reporting key hospital information in March when Ducey ended the state of emergency.2
Carmona worked for 30 minutes during the week of January 30, 2022
He worked a total of one hour for 4 separate weeks
20 other weeks he worked in the single digits
In total there are 40 of 51 weeks where Carmona worked fewer than 10 hours.
The most he worked in a single week is 24 hours during the week ending December 19, 2021.
Here’s a full breakdown in a neatly organized table.
So what exactly did Carmona do during this time? Well, AZDHS sent me a list of his duties:
Joining twice-monthly coordination calls with chief medical officers of more than a dozen Arizona hospital systems, as well as consulting directly with CMOs on pandemic-related matters.
Participating in twice-monthly CDC calls with White House officials, governors’ staff and state health leaders about the pandemic response, vaccines and related topics.
Shooting nine public service announcements.
Authoring seven entries on COVID-19 and vaccines for the ADHS Blog.
Providing interviews to state and national media outlets about COVID-19 and the COVID-19 response.
Leading virtual town halls on COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for AARP (two to date), long-term care facility operators, parents of young children (two to date), veterans and residents of underserved areas.
Conducting a news media briefing with hospital CMOs at the start of the winter Omicron surge.
Assisting ADHS staff developing standards for detecting COVID-19 spread by testing wastewater.
But the invoices don’t actually say what work he provided during those hours and weeks.
It now remains to be seen if Carmona will stay on contract with the state until Ducey’s term is up next January (even without working) or if he will just drift off into the sunset after making roughly 38 times the state’s minimum wage of $12.80 at the expense of taxpayers.
The request I made went up until August 21, 2022.
The Arizona Republic is still writing often about the state’s Covid numbers and included info it got from the CDC about hospitalization data. The state “showed a 16.3% decrease in the seven-day average of COVID-19 hospital admissions during Aug. 15 - 21 compared with Aug. 8 - 14. Hospital admissions last week were down 86% from the peak seven-day average in early January 2021.”