Jeff Centers does not want Jann Heffner's job permanently

Children Services picks chief
Finance director gets Butler County job temporarily
McLaughlin, Sheila. Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 28, 2007, pg. B1.

HAMILTON - The finance director of the Butler County Children Services Board was named interim director Tuesday to replace Jann Heffner when she steps down April 15.

Jeff Centers, who was executive director at Warren County Children Services for eight years before leaving in October and joining Butler County, does not want Heffner's job permanently, said the board chairman, the Rev. Johnny Wade Sloan.

But he said Centers, 43, will be a good fit short term because of his experience.

"He also is new to our agency and has not been here long enough to create enemies," Sloan said.

Heffner, who has served as Butler County's top-ranking children services official since 2002, will be around for a while to help in the transition.

The county is paying her through June 30, the end of her one-year contract as executive director. She said she will be working for the county from April through June on a court improvement project. Then the board will pay her $110,000 through June 2008 to stay on as a consultant for children services.

"We want her to be a resource available to the interim director and the successive permanent director," Sloan said.

Heffner's departure comes at a time the agency's independent board is in jeopardy of being disbanded while officials try to bolster public support for a 2-mill renewal levy in November.

Heffner had said she felt she had become a "distraction" to the agency's mission of helping children. She was at the board's meeting Tuesday.

"Life's just too short," she said Tuesday of the troubles that faced her as the agency's executive director.

Heffner announced her plan to leave the job this month in the midst of the trial of Liz Carroll, the foster mother convicted of murder and other felony charges in the death of 3-year-old Marcus, a developmentally delayed boy from Middletown. Carroll was sent to prison this week for 54 years to life.

Butler County Children Services Board placed Marcus with the Carroll family through a private foster care company.

Lifeway For Youth, which also operates in Kentucky and several other states, earlier announced it will turn over its foster care business in Ohio to another company, but now is appealing the state's recommendation to revoke its license.

Carroll's husband, David Carroll Jr., was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to murder and gross abuse of a corpse in Marcus' death.

Prosecutors said Marcus died after being bound in a blanket with strapping tape and left in a closet at the Carrolls' Clermont County home Aug. 4 while the couple, their children and their live-in girlfriend, Amy Baker, left for two days to attend a family reunion in Williamstown, Ky. Authorities said the boy was dead when the family returned and that David Carroll burned Marcus' body in a remote chimney in Brown County, then tossed the remains in the Ohio River.

Baker said she helped David Carroll dispose of the child's body, but prosecutors gave her immunity in exchange for her testimony against the Carrolls.

David Carroll told The Enquirer in a jail interview that Marcus was dead before the family left for the family reunion and that his wife was not home when the child died. He maintained at sentencing that Baker tied the boy up, but admitted he was there.

To stay on as consultant:
Jann Heffner (left), who was paid $125,000, handed in her letter of resignation earlier this month in the wake of the death of Marcus Fiesel in foster care and questions about her actions in a controversial custody case involving contract coordinator Michelle Money.