County D.A. May Investigate Hospital’s Use of Travel Funds

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office will consider opening a criminal investigation of officials at Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center in Lancaster who spent public funds for their spouses’ travel expenses, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The decision came after the state attorney general’s office ruled Monday that the policy that the public hospital adopted last February, permitting such payments, is illegal. The opinion said payments would violate state laws against conflicts of interest and gifts of public funds.

“Based on the attorney general’s opinion, we’re going to review the activities here,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Gail Ehrlich of the office’s Special Investigations Division, which handles cases of potential criminal misconduct by public officials.

Ehrlich said her office, in determining whether a criminal investigation is warranted, will look at how many hospital officials may have benefited and the amount of public money spent. The attorney general’s ruling dealt only with the policy, not the actions of hospital officials.

David Coats, the newly appointed chief executive officer of the hospital, said he did not immediately know how many of the facility’s five publicly elected directors have taken advantage of the policy, or how much hospital money has been spent on their spouses in the past year.

Hospital officials have said in the past that at least some of the directors had taken spouses on trips at the hospital’s expense.

The hospital’s board voted 3 to 2 last February to adopt the policy so the hospital could pay spouses’ travel expenses when board members attend hospital conferences held across the country. Paying for spouses’ travel had been the hospital’s longtime informal practice, officials said.

Hospital attorney Frank Michelizzi warned the board that he, an attorney for the Assn. of California Hospital Districts, and the Los Angeles County counsel’s office all considered the policy illegal. But the board approved it.