Hospitals Shun Offers by Tobacco Initiative’s Foe

Hoping to curb support for an initiative that would transfer the county’s $260-million tobacco settlement to private hospitals, officials bearing open checkbooks have been quietly meeting with hospital administrators looking to make a deal.

But so far they have been politely stiff-armed.

“We want them to tell us what they need. They just shrug their shoulders,” said Harry Hufford, the county’s chief administrative officer. “I’m extremely disappointed. There has been no serious effort made to consider an alternative to the initiative.”

No offer of deals, contracts or favorable financial agreements with seven local private hospitals has made any headway, and Hufford knows why.

“They don’t lose if the initiative fails and if it passes they gain,” he said.

A spokesman for the private hospitals said they have all been warned against attempts “to divide and conquer.”

Michael Bakst, executive director of Community Memorial Hospital, sponsor of the initiative, said he meets each month with the hospitals’ administrators and added they will not be “duped” by the county.

“There’s not a lot of trust in the supervisors,” Bakst said. “Years of working with them has shown how disingenuous they are. They’d rather see the money burned than have CMH get a cent of it.”

County officials have declared the tobacco initiative an illegal grab of public money and have refused to place it on the November ballot. Now both sides are suing each other in a case that will be heard Monday in Ventura County Superior Court.

Yet despite the bitter rhetoric between supervisors and Community Memorial, there have been quiet attempts at backdoor diplomacy with the other hospitals.

A few weeks ago Hufford and Supervisor John Flynn had a private meeting with Charles Padilla, administrator of St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

“We offered him a deal,” Flynn said, declining to give details. “We wanted him to take a position against the initiative.”

Padilla never responded, Flynn said.

Supervisor Judy Mikels, who sits on the county’s medical oversight committee, spoke to officials at Simi Valley Hospital and Health Care Services.

She said if millions of dollars suddenly flooded county coffers, assistance for private hospitals could come in many forms.

“The discussion was basically that there are a lot of creative things we could do to help private hospitals,” she said. The county could take more transfer patients to its medical center, she said, or devise other ways to make life easier for private facilities.

It didn’t work.

“Wouldn’t you hold tight if you were eyeballing $260 million?” Mikels asked. “The hospitals cannot lose. The county will have to keep them happy with some money if it gets it, and they get all of the money if the initiative passes.”

Supervisors Kathy Long and Frank Schillo also approached hospital administrators in their districts but hit dead-ends.

The $260 million comes from a national tobacco settlement, and amounts to about $11 million a year for the county. Both the county and the hospitals say they will use the money for health care programs.

Jim Lott, spokesman for and vice president of Health Care Associates of Southern California, which represents the local hospitals, said he wasn’t surprised supervisors would try to make individual deals with facilities.

Still, he urged caution.

“If I were a hospital executive, unless someone put a contract on my desk, I wouldn’t agree to anything,” he said. “In fact, I’d show them the door.”

While it might seem perfectly reasonable for officials to lobby for causes that concern the county, attorneys for Community Memorial say those officials should be careful.

“If the county supervisors are going to hospitals and other groups promising public money to oppose the initiative, then they are spending public funds to influence an election which is not legal,” said Dick Martland, an attorney who will represent Community Memorial in court Monday.

Steve Merksamer, a lawyer who also represents Community Memorial, said the county is trying to “silence the opposition” by promising funds before the public has the chance to vote on the initiative.

Hufford said he is still open to negotiations with the private hospitals, but added he is doubtful that a deal can be struck any time soon.

“There are existing contracts but there are ways to enhance them,” he said. “It’s the strangest thing in the world, we are out here with our checkbooks in our hand and no one is interested.”