Wilson Vetoes Bill to Open Hospital Board Meetings

Gov. Pete Wilson has vetoed legislation that would have allowed City Council members to attend board meetings of Downey Community Hospital.

The bill was drafted by Assemblywoman Sally Havice (D-Cerritos) in an effort to partially reopen hospital board meetings that had been closed after the Legislature created a special exemption for the hospital from the state’s open meetings law.

“I am very disappointed,” Havice said Thursday. “This was a good opportunity to give the community back the access it had to the board of their hospital.”

The bill was strongly supported by community and civic leaders, who complained they were being shut of the decision-making process at the hospital.

The hospital and city are battling in court over whether municipal officials have a right to attend meetings of the governing board of the hospital. The hospital is private, but was built on city land in a deal that made City Council members ex-officio, nonvoting members of the board.

In his veto message, Wilson called the Havice bill (AB 146), an “unnecessary intrusion” by the Legislature into a local contract dispute. Allen Korneff, the president and chief executive officer of the hospital, praised the governor’s action, saying the Havice bill would have turned the hosptial from a private, nonprofit institution into a governmental political entity.

The original bill granting the hospital an exemption from the Ralph M. Brown Act was carried in 1996 by Phil Hawkins, a former Republican assemblyman. Hawkins is Havice’s opponent in the Nov. 3 election for the 56th Assembly seat.