County Prepares for Battle to Keep Tobacco Funds

Ventura County officials said Friday they may seek a court injunction to block a ballot measure that would strip the county and its public hospital of about $225 million over the next 25 years from the state’s tobacco settlement and give the money to private medical providers.

The Board of Supervisors will consider that option and other potential legal strategies in a closed session Tuesday, Assistant County Counsel Frank O. Sieh said.

“This is a matter that is extremely serious for the county,” Sieh said.

Meanwhile, supervisors vowed to launch an information campaign against the initiative, which backers hope to qualify for the November ballot.

“I’m not going to sit back,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “It won’t go away unless we do something about it.”

“If they get it on the ballot,” Supervisor John Flynn said, “we’d simply have to go to court.”

Unveiled Thursday, the measure is the brainchild of Michael D. Bakst, executive director of the private Community Memorial Hospital, which for years has been in a political war with the county’s public hospital, a competitor two blocks away in central Ventura.

As county officials responded, Bakst met Friday with administrators from four private local hospitals--Simi Valley Hospital, Santa Paula Memorial, St. John’s Pleasant Valley and St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard--as well as a representative of the Health Care Assn. of Southern California. The county has eight general hospitals.

“They wanted more time to study the issue and bring their respective boards up to speed,” Bakst said. “But I’d have to say I was gratified and flattered by the level of support I received.”

The administrators could not be reached for comment.

Rita O’Connor, a spokeswoman for St. John’s in Oxnard, said her hospital is “interested in the concept of the money from the tobacco settlement being used for health care initiatives.”

O’Connor said, however, the hospital has not yet taken a position on Bakst’s initiative.

Community Memorial’s board endorsed the initiative unanimously except for one abstention by Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, Bakst said. Bradbury, who accepted the board position in 1996 to ease tensions between the county and CMH, could not be reached Friday.

Within two weeks Community Memorial expects to begin gathering nearly 21,000 voter signatures needed to qualify the measure.

Bakst maintains the initiative is not intended as a political weapon against Ventura County Medical Center, but is a way to ensure the tobacco settlement is not misdirected to parks or roads or used to balance the county’s budget.

He cited recent county troubles triggered by a flawed Medicare billing system for its $5-million budget shortfall in December.

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But county officials say Bakst’s measure is just a thinly veiled attempt to put the county hospital out of business.

They cite Bakst’s successful 1996 ballot measure, Measure X, which stopped the county from building a new out-patient wing, laboratory and cafeteria. That campaign cost $1.6 million. Bakst has not said how much he is prepared to spend on the new initiative.

Supervisors said the county hospital still needs those improvements and must be reinforced for earthquake safety as well.

They said Community Memorial also needs money for seismic retrofitting. Bakst acknowledged Friday the tobacco money might allow private hospitals to move forward with those required improvements, while blocking the county from doing the same thing.

If health care services are provided “in a building that needs to be retrofitted, then a hospital . . . needs to be able to do that,” Bakst said. “The county hospital currently receives reimbursement we do not get nor are we privy to.”

Supervisor Kathy Long said she would challenge any private hospital that supports the initiative to operate like a public facility by opening up its books for inspection.

“Let’s have everyone open their books and show how much indigent care they provide, and then we can talk,” she said. “We have [thousands of] clinic visits a year from people who have no insurance. CMH has never been able to step up to that plate.”

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Long said tobacco money is intended to reimburse government for treating patients with smoking-related illnesses, and private hospitals did not incur those costs or participate in lawsuits against cigarette companies.

A 1997 county study showed Ventura County Medical Center treated 83% of uninsured patients in the county who were not poor enough to qualify for government health care. St. John’s in Oxnard cared for nearly 9% of indigent patients. Community Memorial cared for less than 1%, or about 231 patients of nearly 33,000, the county reported.

Supervisors acknowledged Bakst’s previous success has them worried.

“The public’s pretty easy to rally against the government, and Bakst and the firms he hires are very good at creating misinformation,” Flynn said. “I hope the public is a lot smarter this time.”

Bakst said county officials would be foolish to try to block the initiative.

“To take an adverse position against the elderly, the indigent and the children is not something I’d think an astute politician would want to do,” he said.