LOCAL ELECTIONS / TRI-CITY HOSPITAL DISTRICT : Candidates Say Incumbents’ Lack of Business Savvy Wreaked Havoc

In their quest for a seat on Tri-City Hospital District’s board of directors, candidates are making business smarts a central issue, claiming the Oceanside hospital could have avoided two years’ worth of embarrassing financial fiascoes if its elected leaders understood business.

“The board members are not business people,” said candidate Randy Mitchell, 72, who owns a public relations firm in Oceanside. “They’re just not.”

But the incumbents chafe under that criticism.

“To say that is asinine,” snapped RoseMarie Reno, 59, pointing to her experience as a hospital consultant.

Eight candidates, including two incumbents, are seeking three seats on the board, which oversees a 471-bed hospital with total revenues of more than $290 million.

Reno, a nursing instructor at MiraCosta College, and Cyril Kellett, 56, a plastic surgeon, are seeking reelection. A third seat on the five-member board was left vacant in July, when board member Eugene Geil died of a heart attack.

The challengers are Tar Larner, 48, a bank courier who says he would represent the average, “non-professional” citizen; Tom Trainer, 63, a retired Oceanside teacher and school administrator who says his unwavering “positive attitude” would be an asset to the board; Darlene Garrahy, 46, a registered nurse who tried unsuccessfully to install a nurses union at Tri-City; John Green, 63, the finance manager of a church, and Lily Jackson, 69, owner of an Oceanside real estate business.

As Election Day draws near, Mitchell and other candidates are playing up their own business backgrounds while suggesting that the current board--because it is made up of a doctor and three nurses--is ill-equipped to handle issues outside the realm of medicine.

Trying to set himself apart, Green points to his long track record as a bank manager. And Jackson says her 48 years in the real estate business gives her just the kind of expertise the board needs.

But Kellett argues that typical business experience isn’t necessarily applicable in the complex world of health care.

“Hospitals are different than anything else,” he said. “It takes a board member two years to understand how the health-care system works and how hospitals function within it.”

Still, the challengers’ criticisms find some support in the current board’s record.

Kellett acknowledges that the board wasn’t paying close attention to the employee pension fund when about $11 million was invested in an insolvent insurance company that had heavy investments in junk bonds. Hospital officials say they don’t know whether all the money will be recovered.

“A lot of Fortune 500 companies are in the same boat as Tri-City,” Kellett said. “It was just an accident (related to) the economy.”

Nor did the board realize that an expansion project budgeted for $20 million was out of control until it racked up a $58 million bill. Reno gives herself credit for uncovering the cost overrun. Both incumbents say former chief executive officer Richard Hachten let the project run wild behind the board’s back.

“We could never get a number out of him,” Reno said. “He never added up what the cost was.”

The expansion included four projects: a new emergency department and new central utility plant, both of which were finished in the spring, and a women’s center and surgery center to be finished next July.

Following 38 employee layoffs late this summer, employee morale has also become a campaign issue--in a confusing sort of way.

Larner called morale “a problem” and Trainer called it “not a problem.” Mitchell called morale “very, very good” and Garrahy described it as “the lowest it’s ever been.”

“I’ve heard board members say 75% of employees are happy,” Garrahy said. “They’re clueless.”

Doctors’ morale, too, has suffered under the current regime, candidates said, citing the uproar over the board’s hiring of chief executive officer Leon Hooper in 1991.

Upon Hooper’s arrival, furious doctors at a confrontational meeting told him he wasn’t welcomed because the board chose him without conducting a serious search. The doctors claimed that Hooper, a former Tri-City executive, was chosen because he had the best connections, and not necessarily the best qualifications.

“The doctors were livid,” Garrahy said. “The whole process was smarmy.”

Garrahy, meanwhile, is no stranger to controversy herself. From mid-1991 to this spring, she led a doomed effort to establish a nurses union at Tri-City. But she says her bid for the board is not linked to her union organizing.

Rather, she says, her motives are to improve the quality of care and bring “prestigious people and programs” to the hospital.

Garrahy quit her job as a critical care nurse at Tri-City after the union effort failed and now works in the student health center at Palomar College.

TRI-CITY HOSPITAL DISTRICT

8 Candidates--Vote for 3

Darlene Garrahy, nurse

John M. Green, administrator

Lily C. (Lil) Jackson, businesswoman

Cyril F. Kellett, incumbent

Tar Larner, rehabilitation specialist

Randy Mitchell, executive (retired)

Rosemarie V. Reno, incumbent

Tom Trainer, administrator (retired)