The leaders of Tulare Regional Medical Center’s Bond Oversight Committee say their effort to monitor spending of $85 million voters approved to build the hospital’s tower project failed because past CEO’s withheld requested information.
“We got excellent progress reports on the construction progress,” said co-chairman Lynn Dredge, “But the details relating to expenditures in an orderly summary we did not get and we asked for it. We requested it over and over.”
Dredge, former Tulare city manager who has a long record of civic activity in Tulare, blamed leadership changes at TRMC, and specifically former CEO Shawn Bolouki.
Bolouki was hired as the hospital’s chief executive officer in 2008, fired in April 2012, and then rehired in December 2012, as a result of the election a month earlier of current chairman Sherrie Bell and Rosalinda Avitia. They were joined by board members Dr. Parmod Kumar and Richard Torrez in rehiring Bolouki and granting him a $985,250 severance settlement and a $324,240 base salary.
The issue of “who’s responsible?” arose with accusations in a report by the Tulare County Grand Jury and a response by the current TRMC board, which includes members who have served as far back as 1994.
The Grand Jury said the hospital “routinely withheld pertinent information” from the bond oversight committee. It also said the committee “failed to exercise due diligence in following up on request for detailed financial information.”
Dredge and oversight committee co-chair Bill Postlewaite said the majority of requests for information were verbal because meetings regularly had two hospital board members and two members of administration in attendance.
“I did read that [Grand Jury] statement in there and I have no idea what the Grand Jury believed the Bond Oversight Committee should have done that it didn’t do,” Postlewaite said. “And [committee member] Alberto Aguilar pushed very hard for more information. He was the bulldog on that.”
In its response to the grand jury report, the current hospital board pushed back against claims that the oversight committee didn’t get what it needed. “There has been no withholding of pertinent information or financial data by the current board from the [Bond] Oversight Committee, routinely or otherwise,” it said.
The current CEO, Dr. Benny Benzeevi, and his company, Healthcare Conglomerate Associates, known as HCCA, took over operation of the hospital in January 2014. Dredge cited frequent leadership changes prior to Benzeevi’s arrival as one reason the committee did not get what he said it needed.
When it came to getting information from HCCA, which arrived when nearly all bond funds had been spent, Dredge said their basic position was that they had “little to nothing to do with the expenditures of those funds.”
The $85 million in bond money taxpayers approved in 2005 ran out in the fall of 2014.
“HCCA’s position has been, at least as expressed to the bond oversight committee, is that they didn’t have the files and detailed records which were generated during the administrations that had preceded them when the funds were being spent,” he said. “…for them to go back and reconstruct all those files, they just have not done that for the Bond Oversight Committee.”
In its Grand Jury response, TRMC noted it had given the bond oversight committee copies of the audits of the tower project.
The TRMC board recently voted to establish a new bond oversight committee for the proposed $55 million bond measure to complete the hospital’s stalled tower project.
Postlewaite said he would never again serve on a bond oversight committee for the hospital, Dredge said he would. Both also served on the bond oversight committee for College of the Sequoia’s Measure J, which built a permanent college center in Tulare.
“We got information every meeting, which was very specific and very well explained,” Postlewaite said. “Everyone felt really good about serving on that committee. We didn’t get any of that stuff from the hospital.”
Postlewaite was on the hospital’s bond oversite committee for about 10 years.
“For him to say ‘I don’t know what happened,’ what were you doing for 10 years? For the community to accept this is just ludicrous to me,” Benzeevi said. “I would ask these folks to stand up, and since they weren’t able to deliver, maybe just stand up and tell us what happened? How did the hospital get in this situation?”
Benzeevi was also referring to former board members, who recently said in a letter that the current board’s response to the Grand Jury is “full of contempt against this august body.”
The letter signed by five former board members —Lonnie Smith, Prem Kamboj, Leroy Trippel, Deanne Martin-Soares and Victor Gonzalez— says “But we, the former members of the board of Tulare Local Health Care District, are not surprised by this response.”
TRMC’s board had placed “justly deserved” blame on prior boards for problems with the hospital’s stalled tower project.
Its response carefully distinguishes between what it calls the “current board” and those of the past. The present board of directors is composed of Dr. Parmod Kumar (first elected in 1994), Richard Torrez (elected 2008), Sherrie Bell (elected 2012), Laura Gadke (appointed 2013) and Linda Wilbourn (elected 2014).
“The allegation that the current board was not seated until May 2015 is blatantly incorrect,” the former board members said. “…the current board is populated by several members who had responsibilities and voting rights in the timeframe the bond was expended.”
The Grand Jury report alleged that millions of dollars in public funds have not been accounted for. TRMC’s response was released in late April.
“It’s not surprising to me that the very people responsible for the debacle the hospital found itself in would want to create as much distance between them and that situation,” Benzeevi said. “But the fact remains that the people who wrote this letter, I don’t know who Leroy Trippel is, but the rest of them were in ground zero when all this occurred.”
The former board members’ one-page response was released last week.
“Just like the Bond Oversight Committee we were frustrated by all the delays and change orders. Previous to that, the CEO was fired due to ongoing financial losses and delays in the Tower project which he was, the supervisor,” the former board members said. “The first act of the new Board under Sherrie Bell’s leadership in December 2012 was to rehire the former CEO and the previously dismissed law firm that was not adequately serving the board. The forensic audit was then cancelled.”
In 2013, the TRMC board shut down two forensic audits investigating "alleged misappropriations" in the hospital's tower construction project and "alleged misconducts" in operations, according to a preliminary report from its auditors.
The investigations ended "before conclusions could be reached and reports issued," the report said.
“It is not known if a vote was taken or just ordered by one of the Board trustees carried out by the law firm. Interestingly, they fired the CEO and the law first a year later. The district is now represented by the same law firm as is HCCA. Members of the current board were seated during this time,” the former board members said.
At its conclusion, the former board members says there has been a culture of lack of transparency, which has carried on to date.
“We, the former members of the Board of TLHC District hope for answers to how the monies have been spent. We have always been, and remain Stewards of the District.”
June 8, 2016
Visalia Times-Delta
By Juan Villa
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