Tobacco Settlement Funds

Re “County Plans for Possible Fight With Hospital,” May 14.

Community Memorial Hospital would have us believe that its initiative to transfer tobacco settlement money from the county to private hospitals would improve health care in Ventura County. That is a highly questionable proposition because the public would have no control over how those hospitals would spend the money.

What is certain about the transfer is that it would shore up the finances of those hospitals. There is nothing in the initiative proposed by CMH Executive Director Michael Bakst that would prevent the hospitals from using money rightly belonging to Ventura County taxpayers for such expenditures as salary increases for executives or dividends to stockholders.

The crocodile tears Bakst has shed for indigent children and the aged he says he would care for with these dollars are belied by the paucity of such care his hospital has provided in the past. It is Ventura County Medical Center that has provided the vast majority of such care.

The tobacco settlement funds would help repay county taxpayers for the millions of dollars they have already spent in decades of treating indigent patients for tobacco-related illnesses. Every dollar of tobacco money that goes to private hospitals under the CMH initiative is a dollar that county taxpayers will have to pay to meet future budget requirements.

C. JANE TRUE

Port Hueneme

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Re “Taxpayer Group Seeks Tobacco Deal,” May 17.

Cheers to the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn. for choosing not to oppose the tobacco lawsuit settlement initiative.

Something Supervisor Frank Schillo said in this article stood out. He said, “I think we rely on the Taxpayers Assn. to alert the public to things that are happening with their money.”

The tobacco settlement money is not “theirs.” This money comes directly from tobacco companies, not from taxpayers. I am unsure whether any of our supervisors comprehend this concept.

There is a great argument to be made that the Taxpayers Assn. should endorse the tobacco settlement initiative. The money should be used only for health care services and not for the supervisors to pad the general fund and cover for their mistakes.

Ventura County is in trouble financially because of actions this Board of Supervisors took while being paid with taxpayer dollars. Allowing it to solve its problems with private-sector dollars is wrong.

JOHN O’TOOLE

Simi Valley