A Fight for the Courts

Ventura County is right to use every strategy it can to fend off a private hospital’s brazen scheme to divert $260 million in public money to its own use. If Community Memorial Hospital were to get away with it, an endless parade of self-serving ballot initiatives could pop up to siphon off one category of public funds after another at the expense of every taxpayer and government program in the county.

This tussle over Ventura County’s share of the tobacco-lawsuit settlement is headed for court sooner or later. We say it’s better to determine the legality of the hospital’s campaign before it is put to the voters rather than after.

The Catch-22 works this way: California voters are all too familiar with the embittering experience of voting for some fine-sounding ballot initiative only to have a court later toss it out as illegal. But California courts, viewing ballot measures that may or may not pass as hypothetical, traditionally have refused to pass judgment until voters have had their say.

Several members of the Board of Supervisors cited that frustrating cycle last week in refusing to put the hospital’s measure on the November ballot, opting instead to file a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the initiative as an illegal grab of public funds. The suit was filed against Michael Bakst, the hospital’s executive director.

That made Ventura County the first local government in California to turn to the courts in an effort to hang onto its share of the national settlement by tobacco companies over the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses. The Community Memorial Hospital-sponsored initiative seeks to transfer control of the county’s tobacco money to seven private hospitals.

Backers of the ballot initiative say they are only trying to ensure that the money--to be paid out over the next 25 years as reimbursement for money local governments have spent taking care of sick smokers--will be spent on health care. That is a valid concern: The supervisors have endorsed Chief Administrative Officer Harry Hufford’s plan to spend the first year’s installment to help resolve the current budget deficit.

We agree that Ventura County should spend the bulk of the money on health care, although it is not legally obligated to do so. After this year’s emergency has passed, future payments should be used to care for the poor and the mentally ill and, in particular, to care for sick smokers and to warn kids about the hazards of smoking.

But handing the money over to private parties with few restrictions on how they could use it or provisions for public oversight and accountability would be a bad policy and a worse precedent. The law forbids the county from campaigning against this misguided measure, so the fight must be waged in court.

Handing over the tobacco settlement money to private parties would be bad policy and worse precedent.