Use of Tobacco Settlement Money

Measure O is not as complicated as some people want us to believe. It orders all the tobacco settlement money to be used only on health care services. This is clearly where the settlement money belongs.

Curiously, our elected officials struggle with this concept. I still haven’t read about the Board of Supervisors voting to formally spend the settlement money on specific health services.

Thousands of people signed petitions to place the initiative on the ballot, and for good reason. It offers voters an opportunity to choose how the settlement money will be spent. It proposes to spend the money only on health care services, to allow every hospital to provide treatment to the working poor, children and the elderly who can’t afford care.

What’s so complicated about that?

DIANA SCHWAB

Moorpark

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I have volunteered for many worthwhile organizations and causes in the more than 10 years I have lived in Ventura with my husband, who is a surgeon in private practice here. As a spokesperson for the Citizens Committee to Safeguard the Tobacco Settlement for Health Care and campaign coordinator for Measure O, I felt a need to explain why I support this important initiative.

It is important for the tobacco settlement money to be spent on improving the health of all citizens of Ventura County, and I am appalled at the actions of our government with this issue. To date, Ventura County supervisors have not spent any of the tobacco settlement money on health care, but instead have relied on this money to ease their financial burdens, including to pay fines. It is irresponsible for the tobacco settlement money to be used for any purpose other than for health care.

A yes vote on Measure O will ensure that the funds will be used to improve health care for citizens countywide. It is necessary because our supervisors have shown an amazing unwillingness to do the right thing--and put the money where it will provide the greatest good.

KAY WOODBURN

Ventura

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Let’s clear the air and look at Measure O dispassionately.

The money is to come from a lawsuit settlement. Who was part of the lawsuit? Not the author of the initiative. Measure O was written by Michael Bakst, executive director of Community Memorial Hospital, which paid people to circulate petitions so it would be placed on the ballot. The initiative specifies that all money coming from the lawsuit would go to private hospitals and zero would go to the plaintiff.

This is not a partisan issue or a referendum on the performance of the current county supervisors. Measure O puts millions of dollars into the hands of a private board, people who cannot be voted out of office and whose financial records are not open to public scrutiny. Where is the oversight?

Measure O would limit how the money could be spent for the next 25 years without taking into account changing health care needs. With our aging population, I’ll bet senior services are going to be in greater demand. And I cannot imagine that we’ll have the usual suspects on the Board of Supervisors 20 years down the road. Surely even the careerists cannot hold the gavel that long!

Measure O is nothing more than Community Memorial pushing the county out of the way with one hand while the other grabs for the money. It is not about how angry people are at the supervisors. If Measure O is the equivalent of a 25-year-long slap in the face of elected officials, it is our public health programs that would feel the 25 years of pain.

VIRGINIA KLEMZ WEBER

Ventura