On Alameda Daily News TJ Pierce weighs in on the Alameda Hospital Board debate, but since Don Roberts disagrees with him we are treated to one of Don R.’s editorials. But, Don R.’s words actually had me thinking this morning. What is it that makes someone qualified to fill a vacancy on any board, but in particular, this board?
Is it, as Don R. insists, in an earlier editorial, that an applicant must have :
…tried to earn a seat on the Board the old fashioned hard work way – he has never run in an election to allow the voters to decide who should represent them on the Board.
and that requirement:
…should be a pass or fail qualification…
I am not quite sure how losing an election immediately qualifies one for to sit on a board of anything, let alone the Hospital Board. While I am sure that all of the candidates who ran and did not win for Hospital Board in the last election are capable, they had their chance in November and the public decided. The public wanted the other three guys and gal to sit on the Hospital Board.
For me, what I would deem important in a future member of the Hospital Board is someone who is invested in matters around the Hospital Board, who understands the fiscal and social impacts of having a well-run operational medical center in our city. Not someone who ponied up the fee and application required to throw their name on a ballot. So if it’s Rob Bonta or Matt Reid or Tom Pavletic or Christine Chan-Chiu or Stewie Griffin, I’m sure everyone agrees that someone is going to be unhappy with whomever is chosen. Someone somewhere will cry foul and accuse someone of being on someone else’s pockets. In fact, I think that in Alameda, rather than requiring the invocation of the Nazis to trigger Godwin’s Law, it should the first utterance of “Don Perata” that ends the debate and the non Don P declaring side wins. My utterance of Don P doesn’t count. 
I just have an issue with how Alameda handles this whole process. Ideally I would have liked the open seat to go to the next highest vote getter. However that isn’t how it works. Perhaps that should be changed? If that was the case would the votes have fallen differently?
According to this,
http://smartvoter.org/2006/11/07/ca/alm/race/043/
They were all losers though so should Tom Pavletic get a seat with 6.7 percent of the vote?
There is a lot to think about on this issue.
Comment by Ben Kruger — January 15, 2007 @ 8:19 am
Other city positions are filled this way, most notably City Council, so there is some precedent for that method, albeit tangential. The board must codify its procedures at first opportunity.
As far as Pavletic goes, his status as first among the losers is a point in his favor, but even more importantly, he has clearly demonstrated a solid understanding of the fiscal workings of the healthcare district as well as a committment to its sound management. TP is the right choice.
Comment by dave — January 15, 2007 @ 8:40 am
This is a very different process than filling a seat on the Supreme Court – which provides the opportunity to make a change in direction. This is an elected board. The electorate clearly displayed a dislike for the policies of Tom Pavletic and the other distant placers.
LEna Tam, in winning the seat on the hospital board initially, won the support of the public for her vision and views. In filling her vacancy, the Board should find someone that would be in line with her vision and views, not someone who has a different interpretation. In appoint Bonta, they would be honoring the mandate the voters had given to Lena in the first place.
Comment by notadave — January 15, 2007 @ 8:51 am
Some have questioned the integrity of the process employed to fill the recent vacancy on the hospital Board. Others have questioned whether reopening the process has any value as surely anyone qualified to serve should have been sufficiently aware of the opening when first posted. While I do believe that the unsuccessful candidates in the election should have been aware of the opening, I would respectfully suggest that the recent attention paid to the vacancy may prompt other qualified Alameda residents to consider applying for the vacancy.
I am one such person and spoke to the hospital Board on Saturday. My full-time job is to manage the finances of a $150 million HMO located on Bay Farm island. I am an Alameda resident, U.C. Berkeley graduate, licensed CPA and I have an intimate knowledge of healthcare finance and operations. I did not apply sooner because I presume, in error, that there would be a group of qualified applicants from which the Board could choose.
While I cannot say if I am the best qualified candidate, I can say that the citizens of Alameda deserve the best selected from a pool of qualified candidates. I do not necessarily believe that person is either Ms. Tam’s campaign manager or the unsuccessful candidates in the election who failed to submit their Board applications.
I am grateful to the Alameda Journal, Alameda Sun and the blogs for bringing this situation into open light.
Comment by Neal J. — January 15, 2007 @ 10:43 am
I respectfully disagree with Dave about the qualifications of Tom Pavletic. He’s interested in the hospital district all right: he campaigned vigorously against its formation. In public forums, he also unfairly (in my opinion) attacked Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft. I believe I expressed my dismay about his tactics at one forum, telling him he had effectively driven me to the other camp. I also asked him if he was a Libertarian, and he said yes.
So let’s assume he’s put aside his rancor and would get along with the other, elected board members. And let’s assume that a Libertarian would be very smart about spending public money. We still don’t know what his agenda is. What are his goals for the hospital district? He didn’t file a statement in the sample ballot, and I understand he skipped the only public forum held for candidates. It seems he relied on benefiting from the Slate’s coattails and Don Roberts’s endorsement.
Those details aside, the question still remains: what is his agenda, his platform? Would the seat be a toehold in a campaign to run the district into the ground, just after it managed to eke into the black financially? Would he work hard to help make it more financially sound? Who knows?
Fortunately, the board will conduct interviews of the candidates. I hope they bring out the details Pavletic omitted during the recent campaign.
Finally, so what if he finished fourth? He should get no points for running as a stealth candidate and ex officio member of the Slate.
Comment by Linda Hudson — January 15, 2007 @ 11:07 am
Linda,
What is your purpose in attacking the Slate?
Comment by Zone — January 15, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
Attack? What attack? Just stating the facts, ma’am. (At least the facts as I understand them.)
Comment by Linda Hudson — January 15, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
I would have to agree with Linda in comment #5. No points for being 4th. I read an interview of Tom’s when he ran for City Counsel and I understand why he lost City Counsel. No one knows Tom’s agenda for wanting to be on the Hospital Board as he didn’t file a statement. Just because Don Roberts endorsed him doesn’t make him qualified.
From what I know about Tom, Neal J. seems a lot more qualified.
Comment by Joaquin — January 15, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
Pavletic is a watchdog on public spending. The board, and indeed ANY public body, needs such a presence.
Comment by dave — January 15, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Under Lena Tam’s stewardship, the hospital board moved from a losing entity to at least a break even entity. When she ran for the hospital board, she received more votes than any one else running at that time. In her run for the city council this time, she again was the top vote getter. This must tell us something about how the community perceives her judgment and how she delivers on the responsibilities she takes on. The fact that Rob Bonta was her campaign manager tells us two things–he was smart enough to recognize and associate with a quality candidate, and Lena had enough trust in him to utilize his assistance. Furthermore, that she was able to win (NB.WITH NO DEVELOPER MONEY) testifies to his organizational and interpersonal skill. He is an appropriate person to fill the seat. Having run and lost, is no demonstration of any of these qualities.
Comment by Barbara Kahn — January 15, 2007 @ 4:21 pm
Linda, what’s a “stealth candidate and an ex-officio member of the slate”?
Barbara, according to your logic anyone who has ever lost automatically becomes unqualified for the job, and anyone who wins just as automatically becomes qualified. This is circular logic. This of course would make Gore and Kerry unqualified, and Bush smart and trustworthy. Could things be a little bit more complicated than that? Disclaimer: I am not familiar with the candidates for the seat the way some of the commentators are, I’m just pointing out some strange reasoning which I hope does not get applied in choosing a candidate, and the board considers actual qualifications instead.
A question I’ve always wanted to ask: How is the hospital in the black when it is de facto subsidized by a property tax? The amount of hospital property tax was determined with the hospital debt in mind, in order to put it in the black. This is not questioning the merit of a subsidized hospital, it’s questioning what being in the black means—if property taxes are taken out, the hospital is very deep in the red (by about $6 mil if I remember correctly.) Can we even speak of a subsidized hospital as “being in the black”?
Comment by NIMBY — January 15, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
Ani you are very kind. I had a more blunt riposte to the statement that Tam “moved the hospital from a losing entity to breakeven.” Even on a blog generally lacking in financial acumen, that is a singularly dimwitted post and reconfirms the reason why a watchdog presence such as Pavletic’s is a necessity.
Comment by dave — January 15, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
NIMBY is absolutely right. The current regime has reduced the annual operating loss of the hospital from ~$12 MM to ~$5.1 MM. Because we the citizen shareholders pony up ~$5.7 MM annually through the $298 per parcel tax, the dubious claim to being “$600k in the black” was born.
Anyone who watched the LOWV panel would have seen me articulate this point, but beyond my own spouse and children (two of whom watched with hands over their eyes, clearly embarrassed to see their old man on the boob tube), I may have been the only other person watching. This comment will probably get better circulation!
I see it as a the most significant challenge of my career to take this organization into the black – truly- and to repeal the parcel tax – NOT because the hospital is shuttering, but becase we have navigated success in a very difficult marketplace.
Comment by Matt Reid — January 15, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
The voters have very clearly stated that they don’t want Tom Pavletic nor Matt Reid on the board. To put them on now would be ignoring the voter mandate. In other words, neither is qualified to serve.
Comment by notadave — January 15, 2007 @ 8:31 pm
Geez notadave, I missed you on Saturday. How did my diagram post escape your sardonic rapier?
Comment by Matt Reid — January 15, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
I wanted to bring up the issue of voting systems because that was touched on in Lauren’s initial post and in some of the replies.
I don’t like the idea that we look at the most recent election results to determine who should fill vacated seats, whether it’s for the hospital or the city council.
When my vote was tabulated in this past election, there was no way to determine my preference (or any voter’s preference) for a candidate to fill an uncontested seat that was vacated because the board member/council member was elected to another office (e.g. Lena Tam or Doug de Haan if he had won the mayoral race).
My vote for a particular candidate does not communicate a preference for anyone other than the candidate I selected. In fact, when we went to the polls, we were voting for the three open seats; Tam’s seat was not under consideration during the election. It seems odd that one would assume that the election results should apply to seat that wasn’t being contested at the time of the election.
We could consider the Single Transferable Vote (STV) or rank preference voting system for future Alameda elections. Does anyone out there want to amend the City Charter?
San Francisco has instituted a form of STV. I believe that Australia and Northern Ireland use a form of it too. [I never thought that a semester of comparative electoral systems in graduate school would come in handy!] Maybe Lauren would want to start a topic on alternative voting systems?
Comment by Michael Kusiak — January 15, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
Does #14 not apply to Bonta?
Comment by dave — January 15, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
Matt your diagram was so full of inaccuracies and half truths that it wasn’t even worth commenting on. Regarding Bonta, my comments in #3 still hold true.
Comment by notadave — January 16, 2007 @ 8:04 am
The disconnect between 3 and 14 is quite amusing, given your recent exhortation to improve reading comprehension.
Comment by dave — January 16, 2007 @ 8:27 am
I don’t see where Dave can say in comment #9 that “Pavletic is a watchdog on public spending”. What experience does he have that shows us that. All I know is he is the head of Bayport Parking committee and we have seen nothing. He is also running for the HOA Board.
In his previous run for City Counsel he was against any changes to Alameda Landing as it was previously entitled – such as housing and retail – being an anti development individual he purchased a new house in the new development by Albertson when it was new, and now at Bayport. So I guess he is pro-development when it benefits him.
Comment by Joaquin — January 16, 2007 @ 8:55 am
notadave- hurling vituperative blather from an anonymous alter ego is so 1998. I’ve grown weary of filtering the occasional insightful comment from your churlish bombast. Let us all hope that such sophomoric rodomontade is a form of catharsis for you and whatever pent-up anger it is you harbor against civilization.
Comment by Matt Reid — January 16, 2007 @ 8:56 am
I say that about Pavletic because he has put a fair bit of energy into being an anti-tax watchdog: campaigning against tax levies, speaking before council, etc. He has done more than bar-room bitching about taxes, which is all the effort most of us ever expend. He shows commitment, tenacity, and command of numbers.
And Bayport has a Parking Committee? What in the wide world of sports is that all about??
Comment by dave — January 16, 2007 @ 10:12 am
Dave,
In #14 I said that neither Reid nor Pavletic represented the will of the voters and thus shouldn’t be appointed. In #3 I said that the person to be appointed should represent the views of Lena Tam, who id represent the views of the voters. Since Bonta has worked closely with Tam, I would assume he is allied with her views. Where is the disconnect? If my assumption is off, let me know.
Comment by notadave — January 16, 2007 @ 10:39 am
It is foolhardy to assume a person’s view based on their colleague’s views.
You would have a bit more credibilty if you’d simply state that like Bonta and prefer him to Pavletic. Then it would simply be your opinion, to which you are entitled. Your tortured attempts at logic & rationaliztion make you appear rather obtuse, to say nothing of truculent.
Comment by dave — January 16, 2007 @ 11:23 am
Hey that’s some great vocabulary in #21. I actually had to look up “rodomontade.”
Comment by NIMBY — January 16, 2007 @ 11:44 am
Ok, for those who want to know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodomontade
Comment by Alameda Joe — January 16, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
hehe, he said rodomontade, hehe
Comment by notadave — January 16, 2007 @ 5:14 pm