[Peace-discuss] County Nursing Home

[Ricky Baldwin]

Since someone foolishly asked, some points I find interesting about the ongoing County Nursing Home (NH) fiasco - which hopefully others who know more can correct...

The NH once made money.  In fact, the County Board used to borrow from
the NH budget to balance general.  Patricia Avery (who gave the Policy Committee a wonderful tongue lashing) was on the Board at
that time and is proud of that fact, but raised it in the context of the current hypocrisy.  The downturn seems to have
happened before she left the Board, but of course that's not the issue,
which is: the NH is a valuable community resource, and the Board had
no problem borrowing from it when it was doing well to fund other
projects; now (neutrally) it's not doing well, it has to stand on its
own?

The Board asked voters not long ago for money for the NH - not enuf, as
they were apparently informed, but they stuck to their lower figure -
and the voters gave it to them.  It wasn't enuf: surprise!  But the
current leadership refused to go back to the voters to ask for more. 
The point they're missing, perhaps intentionally, but who knows: the NH
is a valuable community resource and the community recognizes this, and
is willing to fund it.

The public was apparently extremely disheartened by mgmt of the new construction, however.  Recall there were moldy materials, a system of contracting out the subcontractors and a buck that seemed to never stop.  Some said the Board wasn't holding the responsible parties responsible, if you see what I mean.  This seems to be a recurring theme over the NH.  The details seem somewhat less relevant to the current situation, but it's part of the Board's recent pattern of neglect of ... a valuable community resource.

Everybody knows the Board privatized the mgmt of the NH over widespread objections.  As if this weren't bad enuf - Buffenbargar, the man accused of mismanaging the NH in the first place (altho not by his lonesome, I understand) and apparently an advocate of privatization from the beginning, I'm told, was selected by the profiteers as their man to run the NH under "new" mgmt.  The icing on the cake was that, despite legal provisions requiring that the new NH head chosen by the profiteers be approved by the Board, no approval process took place.  Instead, the leadership claimed that no approval was necessary, b/c Mr. B. had previously been approved back when he was working for the Board as NH head.  So what changed exactly with the valuable community resource?  Less oversight or at least less direct oversight (read: accountability), and of course now the added burden of turning a profit.

Now the Board leadership (Weibel &c) want to remove the theoretical oversight of the Social Svc and Justice Cmte (is that the right name???).  BTW, it's "theoretical" not only because there's little the Cmte can do given the privatized nature of mgmt, but also b/c even though the legal requirement has been on the books Buffenbargar &c have actually ceased altogether reporting to the committee.  They still report to Finance - more on that below.  But Weibel claims the "Justice" committee's oversight isn't necessary.  In fact, he says - apparently reading his Orwell - this change "isn't less oversight, it's more".  How?  The full Board, which still bears the ever-vaguer responsibility of oversight, is "more people"!

Indeed, the point Stuart raises is excellent.  The
whole Board was an unwieldy oversight vehicle when it was farming out
mgmt of NH to private profiteers (along with the usual "as a public
entity it's losing money, so obviously a private entity with the same
income stream and expenses [wink - labor? - wink] but an additional burden of needing to profit
will be more efficient").  Weibel made the very point about committees
again in a more general context of Board business a couple weeks ago at
Policy Committee: the Board delegates work to committees because it's
more efficient, at least in theory, than whole-Board oversight.  But now, when Weibel wants to remove the oversight of one particular committee (which may happen to include members who question him), the reverse is true.

Addendum to the above: Weibel's remark was in defense of the sweeping
authority of the Finance Committee, which came up in the context of
questions about Board members inability to get on Finance.  We learned
in the course of Weibel's remarks that (a) he appoints who he wants to
the 3-member Finance Cmte, period, and he has that authority, period; (b) he
does check with the Republicans, rather than members of his own party (such as, e.g., the same people who might be on the "Justice" Committee),
on such things; and (c) purely
coincidentally, of course, it is Finance that will still have oversight
of ... wait for it ... the NH... even after "Justice" Cmte
is -er- relieved of this burden.

When challenged, the Weibel-McGinty-Nudo crew also claim that the change in oversight has nothing to do with privatization, of course.  It's only, they say, fixing up details as implied directly by earlier actions - i.e. farming out the NH mgmt to private profiteers.  Weibel even said in the open meeting that exactly this had already been decided upon some time back, but he allows this is not recorded in the minutes, he says b/c the minutes are of a general nature... but he remembers it clearly.  So we should trust him.  (My Choctaw and Muskogee ancestors heard similar "trust me" arguments before, I seem to recall.)  No skulduggery here, they say, honest.  Whoever says there is is a big fat liar.


Mr. Nudo goes on to say that, as it must have been a Board member who started these "rumors" that brought the newsmedia - "The media!  We've never had media at a committee meeting before, and there [pointing] is three of 'em!" - and if it was a Board member that told the public (even worse!), he would support censure for that Board member!  (Nudo knew perfectly well who he was talking about, who had done the unthinkable: communicated with constituents with regard to Board business at hand.)  Censure!  And what treatment for subjecting this valuable community resource, serving elderly and indigent community members and doing so relatively well despite it all, to death by a thousand cuts?

See you Thursday night.
Ricky


"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn



      
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