Submitted to the Fort Bragg Advocate-News, and published on May 18, 2006

Dear Editor:

The recent article, "Hospital Resource Council Threatens Hospital District" is another apparent effort by the Advocate to paint the Hospital Resource Council as irresponsible troublemakers. The reporting is selective and biased, and the headline is groundlessly inflammatory. 

Board Chairperson Charlene McAllister is given a forum for venting her anger at the Council, but Council members are not given space to respond.

Readers are given the impression that the Council is seeking an excuse to take the hospital to court. Rather, the Council is trying to get the hospital to follow California laws that require our public hospital to conduct its business openly. The reasoning behind this law, which the HRC supports, is that open conduct of hospital affairs will gain public support and lead to better decisions.

Asking for public documents is not "threatening" the hospital. We involved a lawyer only after the hospital had rejected several informal requests for an evaluation of board performance. At this same time, the board was conducting its CEO replacement deliberations entirely in closed sessions.

Our interest was and is in helping our hospital to survive, prosper, and gain strong community support. The hospital could have and now can resolve the legal issue by providing the requested document and appropriately conducting open meetings in conformance with the Brown Act. No legal fees are necessary.

We have posted the HRC's full correspondence with the hospital at the HRC website www.savethehospital.org. You can judge for yourself about the reasonableness of our requests and the Board's responses.