The head of the District’s citywide emergency and public service call center is an inexperienced leader whose behavior toward staff and on-the-job performance have angered employees and failed to win the confidence of the D.C. Council, a legislative panel contends.
The council’s public safety committee, chaired by Councilman Phil Mendelson, slammed Office of Unified Communications Director Janice Quintana for being “antagonistic toward employees,” for “retaliating against employees,” and for a “lack of understanding that the OUC serves as an important public safety function.”
“The Committee was concerned about Director Janice Quintana because of her lack of direct experience with public safety,” the committee’s budget report states. “Director Quintana’s performance over the past year has done little to give the Committee confidence in her ability to effectively lead and manage the OUC.”
Quintana, appointed by Mayor Adrian Fenty in January 2007, leads a staff of about 400 with a $53.2 million annual budget. She is the former director of the Mayor’s Citywide Call Center.
Mendelson and Quintana have gone head-to-head during council meetings, but the committee’s language is unusually harsh.
The budget document also denounces the new 911/311 system touted by Fenty and managed by Quintana. The policy, implemented earlier this year, asks citizens to call 911 for emergency or nonemergency public safety needs and to dial 311, the former nonemergency public safety number, for everything else.
“For decades this government has drilled into the public mind that emergency calls go to 911, non-emergencies to go 311,” the report states. “The dedication of 911 for emergencies is a lesson taught across the country. The proposed change goes against this training and will detract from public safety.”
The critical budget language was adopted Thursday in its entirety by the five member public safety committee. It does not call for Quintana to step down.
“Director Quintana is as fine a communications director that the District of Columbia has ever had, as fine as you’ll find anywhere in this country,” Fenty said Friday. “The mayor of the District of Columbia and the citizens of this city are lucky to have her.”
Quintana declined to comment.
