Measure O Arguments

* Re “Measure O and Accountability,” Ventura County letters, Sept. 24.

Measure O supporter Jere Robings asks, “What exactly does [supervisor accountability] mean? Will someone please tell me when the county supervisors have ever been held accountable?”

I’d be happy to reply.

Public accountability means being required to give a detailed, public report of money spent. It’s an obligation of county government. It’s not an obligation of private corporations like Community Memorial Hospital, which can allocate and spend funds in secret, with no requirement that they give a public explanation of their spending decisions.

County supervisors are held accountable for their actions at election time. If we don’t like the way our tax dollars are being spent, we can vote out a supervisor and vote in a new one.

Measure O would take 260 million of our public dollars and turn them over to Community Memorial. I have my own two questions about that arrangement:

If Measure O passes, will hospital board meetings be open meetings so we can watch over how our $260 million is being spent? And when will I get to vote for new administrators and board members for Community Memorial if I am unhappy with spending decisions made by the current ones?

I won’t hold my breath waiting for a reply because the truthful answer to my first question is “no” and to my second question is “never.”

Which is why I’m voting no on O.

RICK SCOTT

Ventura

* Re “Officials Propose Tobacco Fund Ordinance,” Sept. 23.

Kudos to Mike Morgan! His suggestion that the Board of Supervisors devise a fair way to support Ventura County Medical Center while sharing a portion of the money with the county’s private hospitals, and that the board pass an ordinance mandating that all tobacco money received in the future be used only for health care, is right on.

The tobacco money should be used to provide health care to county residents, not to pay off fines levied on the county as a result of poor decisions made by our Board of Supervisors or for anything else the board may deem more important in the future.

As for Supervisor Kathy Long, her suggestion that Morgan’s idea is a “day late and a dollar short” is disingenuous. If the board had discussed these ideas earlier as having merit, why didn’t it act immediately to pass such an ordinance? That might have prevented Measure O from receiving the necessary signatures to reach the November ballot.

I will vote for Measure O unless I see the Board of Supervisors take immediate action to pass an ordinance before Nov. 7 requiring tobacco money to be spent only for health care for Ventura County residents.

SHARON ZINI

Camarillo

* Michael Bakst, executive director of Community Memorial, will not be happy until he closes down Ventura County Medical Center.

That would be a real tragedy for Ventura County, not only for the many patients [the hospital] takes care of, but for the doctors it trains. The residency program has a reputation of being one of the best. Medical students come from all over the country to train there.

BETTY GLEESON

Ventura

* What I am sensing from the published letters and the concerns they raise is that we can’t have it both ways, and that’s the dilemma of Measure O.

While most of us understand that most of the care given to people for tobacco-related illnesses is at Ventura County Medical Center, there are still large numbers of treatments done in the private hospitals. Thrown into the mix is our growing distrust for how the politicians have dipped into available millions to bail themselves out of some money mishap and they certainly could do so again.

So shall we vote to give it all to the private sector and eliminate the political finger in the pie? Or shall we trust county officials to actually do as they promise and let it all be used for health care? Do we trust the private hospital administrators more or less than the politicians?

I wonder if the tobacco companies will declare bankruptcy before the first checks go out.

MARILYN ARNOLD

Simi Valley