Hospital’s Tab for Tobacco Initiative Tops $500,000

Community Memorial Hospital has spent nearly $520,000 pushing its tobacco initiative, making it one of the most expensive ballot measures in county history.

Hospital Executive Director Michael Bakst said Thursday he was playing to win, adding that to ensure a good chance of victory, top lawyers and a public relations firm have been hired.

“I wish I didn’t have to spend a cent on this,” said Bakst, who sponsored the initiative, which seeks to transfer $260 million in tobacco settlement money from the county to seven local private hospitals.

“We don’t compromise on the quality of care we give, and we take the same approach to the people we hire to win this initiative.”

The county has refused to place the tobacco initiative on the November ballot, saying it is illegal. Now, Bakst and the county are suing each other and a Ventura County Superior Court judge will decide in coming days whether the measure should be put before voters.

The winner gets $10 million a year for the next 25 years, and both sides say they will spend it all on health care programs.

Bakst said most of the money has gone toward legal bills. He has hired the blue chip law firm of Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor. One of the firm’s lawyers, Steven Merksamer, is the former chief of staff to former California Gov. George Deukmejian and an expert in initiative law.

Bakst, who said his hospital board supports the expenditures, also hired Fleishman Hillard, one of the nation’s largest public relations firms.

He said he hired outside spokesmen because he has become such a lightning rod. This is, after all, a man once described by county supervisors as a “train robber” and “Mr. Blackheart.”

“I want this to be about the initiative and not about me,” Bakst said Thursday. “They can call me whatever they want but this tobacco settlement is a windfall for health care.”

Bakst said his spokesmen are kept busy rebutting what he describes as distortions and inaccuracies put out by the Board of Supervisors and media.

“It’s hard to tell how much we’ll have to spend,” he said. “We can’t know how much distortion we’ll need to correct.”

So far, Community Memorial is paying all the bills in the initiative fight while the other private hospitals, which also stand to reap the rewards of the measure, haven’t chipped in anything. Bakst says he isn’t bothered by this and preferred to take the lead so he could develop the strategy.

With more than a half-million dollars spent so far and more on the way, the fight is shaping up to rival the 1996 Measure X campaign. During that fight, Bakst said, Community Memorial successfully spent about $1.3 million to stop the county from putting additions on the county Medical Center.

That campaign was the most expensive in the county, said Bruce Bradley, assistant registrar of voters.

“This one is the second-most expensive right now,” Bradley said.

And it’s not over.

Community Memorial intends to hire consultants to run a campaign promoting the tobacco initiative as the best way to deliver quality health care to all county residents. Bakst has consistently said supervisors would use the money to balance the budgets of county departments no matter what they promise publicly.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said constituents told him they were polled at home by firms hired by Community Memorial. Schillo said the pollsters asked residents how they felt about the initiative and the Board of Supervisors.

Community Memorial spokesman Mark Barnhill said it was possible phone polling was occurring, but added he was not certain.

Schillo, who along with Supervisor Judy Mikels will host six public hearings in September to gauge public opinion on how to spend the tobacco money, was disturbed by the amount spent by Community Memorial.

“This is a nonprofit hospital spending all their profit when they should be spending that money to help the indigent,” he said. “They have a penchant for spending a lot of money on initiatives and it looks like they are going all out on this.”