PHOENIX — Arizona’s worker safety program is looking for a new director for a second time this year.
Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH) announced Thursday that Director Mark Norton, a long-time employee who was promoted to the position just three months ago, is leaving.
The Industrial Commission of Arizona, the state agency over ADOSH, plans to conduct a national search for a replacement. Until then, Phil Murphy, an ADOSH assistant director, will serve as interim.
Industrial Commission Chairman Dennis Kavanaugh thanked Norton at a meeting on Thursday, where the resignation was announced.
“We appreciate all the years of work that you have done both for the commission and in the industry for workplace safety,” he told Norton.
ADOSH oversees workplace health and safety standards for three million public and private employees in Arizona, including inspecting worksites to see whether employers are following safety and health standards.
The ABC15 Investigators have been reporting all year on issues of workplace safety, including families complaining that ADOSH gives small companies reductions on their fines, even in cases where workers die. Such fine adjustments are allowed under federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) policies. But the reductions are controversial with families, who refer to them as “discounts.”
“Anybody dying, it should not be discounted. It’s like, basically saying like, their life wasn’t worth anything. And that’s not fair,” said Covina Reveles in an interview with ABC15 earlier this year. Her husband, Pete, died this year when a wall collapsed on him at a cattle ranch in the West Valley.
Over the past year, other families whose loved ones have died in workplace accidents have pushed for changes, accusing ADOSH of weak enforcement of safety standards.
RELATED: Industrial Commission of Arizona plants to increase workplace inspections
OSHA in 2022 took the rare step of threatening to take over Arizona’s worker-safety program after they said Arizona “routinely failed” to provide a program that is at least as effective as federal standards.
ADOSH called the threatened federal takeover “unfounded” and “arbitrary” in a letter responding to OSHA. OSHA backed off its takeover threat earlier this year.
ADOSH also has had problems hiring and retaining enough inspectors. The most recent federal audit criticized ADOSH for meeting only 44% of its workplace inspection goal for fiscal 2022. The audit said ADOSH conducted 486 inspections out of a goal of 1,100 in fiscal 2022.
In a response to the audit, ADOSH officials said the decline in inspections was because they had fewer personnel. ADOSH officials say they have since hired more inspectors and have taken multiple steps to recruit and retain staff. Earlier this year, the governor appointed a new chairman and a new director to the Industrial Commission. The long-time ADOSH director resigned in September and was replaced by Norton. Norton held the position for about three months before recently informing the Industrial Commission that he was resigning.
In a significant development last week, the Industrial Commission imposed a $25,000 fine that will go directly to the family of a worker who died.
The worker, Dalton Lee, has a wife and three children. He was electrocuted in July while installing an air-conditioning unit in Tucson. An ADOSH inspection found that a Tucson crane company that Lee hired violated multiple safety regulations. The company was fined $32,144 in addition to the $25,000 fine that will go to his family.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook.
