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Ex-health commish coming back

Former city health commissioner John F. Domzalski has agreed to come out of retirement to run the Health Department for the final three months of the Street administration, Managing Director Loree D. Jones announced yesterday.

Former city health commissioner John F. Domzalski has agreed to come out of retirement to run the Health Department for the final three months of the Street administration, Managing Director Loree D. Jones announced yesterday.

Domzalski, 66, who ran the department from 2000 to 2005, will take over Monday from interim commissioner Carmen I. Paris, who had headed the agency the past 18 months.

Paris was demoted to deputy commissioner this week for her role in allowing the city's top food-safety expert to remain on Philadelphia's payroll, working one day a week, after he took a similar job in Washington, D.C.

Domzalski, a Mount Airy resident, will be paid at a rate of $150,000 a year.

"He's had 38 years in city government and he knows the department well," said Jones. "He's known as a strong manager and we're grateful he has agreed to come back."

Paris was one of four senior department officials disciplined this week for allowing the city's food-safety chief, George J. Zameska, to extend his city employment with a one-day-a-week schedule.

Zameska himself was fired from his $86,000-a-year Philadelphia job. He had given up the Washington position last April, just after Philadelphia's inspector general opened an investigation.

John A. Rafes, 57, the supervisor who signed Zameska's time-sheets, was forced to take early retirement. But the higher-ups in the department were dealt with more leniently.

Paris, 50, lost the commissioner's post, but she was considered unlikely to hold onto it after a new mayor takes office in January.

Assistant Health Commissioner Izzat Melhem, 41, was demoted to fill Rafes's position as director of the environmental-health-services program, supervising Zameska's food-service unit, among other duties. *