Just as oil and water don’t mix, there’s no room in Pennsylvania’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs for lobbyists. The problem is, apparently no one told DDAP Secretary Gary Tennis.

On Tuesday the Reading Eagle published a lengthy report in which a former DDAP employee, Angela Episale, said Tennis told her in 2015 to meet with a well-known lobbyist.

Episale at the time was vying for a job at the department, and said Tennis told her that meeting with the lobbyist, Deb Beck, would “give me my best chance,” at landing the job..

Episale says after she and Beck met, Tennis told her it went well, and Episale was hired by the agency. She voluntarily left DDAP about a month ago.

On Wednesday Tennis denied seeking Beck’s approval in hiring Episale, and said he was fired for opposing Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to consolidate the agency. But whether his orchestration of the meeting was a bald-faced expression of corruption and an abdication of his responsibility, or a tone-deaf blunder, the optics aren’t great. Tennis, whose post was created under Gov. Tom Corbett in 2012, was fired by Wolf on Tuesday afternoon.

That’s the proper response when you learn that the person who is supposed to be leading the state’s charge against the opioid epidemic is allegedly letting an industry lobbyist call the shots. DDAP is not only responsible for developing Pennsylvania’s plan for dealing with drug abuse, it’s the agency that oversees and licenses nearly 800 drug treatment contractors across the state — including 15 in Butler County.

In the short term, Wolf has DDAP on the right track by ousting Tennis. But it’s the long-term and retroactive implications of this mess that are more concerning. Criticism of the relationship between DDAP and Beck’s group, the Drug & Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania (DASPOP) existed before Tuesday.

Last June, Sen. Joe Scarnati, a Jefferson County Republican and the state Senate’s president pro tempore, said Beck’s industry group has “unbridled control” over DDAP. Scarnati claimed that the situation resulted in the agency failing to diversify and update its anti-drug programming.

Here in Butler County the revelations give some legs to the warnings of Norma Norris, the founder of the nonprofit CANDLE, Inc. and the anti-drug program Reality Tour. Last November, DDAP barred Reality Tour from receiving state funding, labeling it an ineffective program that relied upon “scare tactics.”

Norris responded by criticizing the agency’s decision-making process, saying it was cherry-picking its facts and that researchers were dismissing Reality Tour without sufficient review.

Whether or not you believe Reality Tour is effective, Episale’s allegations line up with Norris’ critique: that the agency was abdicating its responsibilities to a clique of researchers and industry insiders, who were pushing their own agendas rather than the best interests of the public.

At this point it’s not Reality Tour that has to answer questions about its effectiveness. That burden falls upon DDAP.