Board of Supervisors Is the Health Authority

Your editorial “Excising Hospital Politics” (Jan. 18) was correct. I am concerned about Civil Service rules that prohibit firing of incompetent managers and medical personnel at our county hospitals and oppose establishing a health authority that would be bound to the same restrictive Civil Service and labor contract rules that currently plague us.

A health authority is an oxymoron -- a multimillion-dollar bureaucracy with no control over the budget, the Department of Health, the chief administrative officer or the Board of Supervisors.

We currently spend more than $262 million a year for the Department of Health administration and millions more for King/Drew administration and the chief administrative officer.

They must be required to do their job and implement the measures to fix King/Drew -- or be replaced. The Board of Supervisors is our county health authority. A new layer of bureaucracy would not solve problems -- only aggravate them.

Michael D. Antonovich

L.A. County Supervisor