Are anti-mask Johnson County business execs playing both sides of the COVID coin?
There are profiteers in every war, and those with ambiguous loyalties. Or none.
If two Johnson County companies in COVID-19-related businesses are not at the same time prolonging the pandemic by encouraging anti-mask efforts, they at the very least give the appearance of playing both sides.
First, there’s Brian Cleary, CEO of Overland Park-based Krucial Staffing, a firm that specializes in providing temporary health care workers for emergency response and disaster recovery around the country. And right now, that business is booming as states struggle with hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. Krucial job postings offer $125 per hour, with overtime of $187, for registered nurses who travel to help struggling hospitals in Texas and elsewhere. Right now while the need is so great, and federal disaster relief funds are underwriting the wages, one Krucial traveling nurse told the editorial board that generous per diems and housing allowances mean his peers can clear as much as $6,000 a week after taxes — vastly more than what the staff nurses they’re working alongside are earning.
At the same time, a prominent Johnson County anti-mask group, Mask Choice 4 Kids, was supposedly started by Cleary’s 19-year old son.
Cleary did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, a representative at Krucial said the company would not comment. Hours later, his son, Jacob Cleary, who is away at college, relinquished his supposed leadership role with Mask Choice 4 Kids and abruptly handed the reins of the organization over to an outspoken Donald Trump ally. That’s Tana Goertz — a past runner-up on “The Apprentice” TV show and a “personal friend of President Trump,” according to the top line of her LinkedIn profile.
Signs touting the group have been popping up in intersections and in front of schools in recent days. Its Facebook page insists, “We are not anti-mask, anti-vaxxers or anti-anything, just pro choice and freedom!” But its call for all junior high and high school students to “to join the stance for freedom” by uncovering their faces after first period every Tuesday is as anti-mask as it gets.
In a message on a separate Facebook group, Blue Valley Parents for In-Person Learning + Parent Choice, Brian Cleary wrote Sunday that it was his 19-year-old son who’d come up with the idea of Mask Choice 4 Kids, “then a bunch of parents have run with it.”
Cleary isn’t the only Johnson County anti-mask agitator who also has skin in the health care business.
Laura Klingensmith is one of the parents behind a lawsuit filed in May against the Blue Valley and Olathe school districts to allow children to attend classes unmasked. She has also testified before the Kansas Legislature, advocating for in-person classes.
Klingensmith is co-founder and vice president for sales of HRG, or Healthcare Revenue Group, an Overland Park medical billing and consulting firm. She did not reply to multiple requests for comment left at the office.
“What if anti-mask group founders are intentionally trying to make people sick to prolong and profit from the pandemic,” asks a video circulating on social media. That would certainly be ghoulish.
Even if Cleary and Klingensmith aren’t purposely extending the pandemic while also profiting from it, that is what they’re effectively pushing for in encouraging students to go unmasked.
Now that their own masks are off, maybe they will explain themselves.
Editor’s note: Krucial Staffing announced Friday that it has accepted the resignation of Brian Cleary.
This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.