Newly installed Spokane Regional Health District administrator Danny Scalise wants to bring stability to an agency that has had a revolving door of leaders since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Not having a leader for a stretch made it hard for the employees. They don’t know which direction to go. I plan to simmer that down, give them some stability in the direction we’re going,” he said in a thick Appalachian drawl.

The West Virginia native moved across the country last month to lead the Spokane Regional Health District as its new administrative officer. The agency oversees important community functions like the tracking of disease outbreak, food safety inspection and the operation of an opioid treatment clinic.

Leadership at the health district has been in disarray since the 2020 firing of former health officer Bob Lutz. Former administrator Amelia Clark left the district in 2022 amid fallout from that controversial firing. She was replaced a year later by Alicia Thompson, who was then fired in 2025 because of unnamed performance concerns. For the past seven months, the district has been led by interim administrators Ray Byrne and Kim Kramarz.

Scalise hopes to stay in post for at least the next five years and provide a steady hand he says the agency has struggled without in recent years.

“What I think people are going to see here is a change in culture and a change in the environment,” he said. “I think, in five years, this culture is going to be a team environment.”

The agency’s current strategic plan is not changing, and the ways in which the public interacts with the health district may stay the same. But Scalise hopes to “break down the internal silos” between departments that make SRHD less effective.

In hiring Scalise, the health district’s board was ensuring a steady financial steward is at the helm at a time when public health may face financial cuts from the state and federal government, according to health board Chair Michael Cathcart.

“He understands fiscal prudence at a time when we have potentially widespread budget challenges,” said Cathcart, a Spokane city councilman.

Scalise grew up in the coal country of rural West Virginia and left to pursue a career in finance. In 2008, he was laid off from a large Wall Street financial firm at the onset of financial crisis.

“Me and 40,000 of my closest colleagues were no longer needed, and I found public service,” he said.

Scalise moved back home from New York City and became an adviser to Joe Manchin, who was the Democratic governor of West Virginia at the time. In that role, he oversaw more than a billion in federal stimulus money to the state’s recovery after the economic crash.

“It was with Gov. Manchin that I first worked on public health administration. At first, I did not understand why, but he would tell me, ‘You understand money, son, and no one here seems to understand that,’ ” he said.

Scalise went on to serve as administrator for Fayette County Health Department in the area of West Virginia he grew up in and was executive director of the West Virginia State Medical Association. Most recently, Scalise served as public health director for Burke County Public Health in North  Carolina for the past five years. Set along the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Burke County has more than 85,000 residents.

Scalise has no connection to Spokane or Washington . Asked why he wanted to move across the country to be a public servant for a community he barely knew, Scalise said Spokane is a “welcoming community.”

“I would not be angry if I retired from here. It’s one of those things that I feel very good about. I feel good about the community. I feel good about the move that I made here,” he said.

Note: A previous version stated Danny Scalise served as public health director for Burke County Public Health in South Carolina. Burke County Public Health is located in North Carolina.