Board talked privately of King plans
Los Angeles County supervisors acknowledged Tuesday that they had discussed plans for the embattled Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in closed-door sessions, in what a good-government expert called a violation of the state's open-meeting law.
The discussion, which the county's top lawyer defended, is the latest example of questions arising over the supervisors' handling of meetings about the Willowbrook hospital.
Supervisors Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky said during Tuesday's public meeting that board members had talked several times in private with county health chief Dr. Bruce Chernof about potential contingency plans should King-Harbor lose federal funding and be forced to close.
"We would be prepared to discuss those contingency plans as you did with us last week and the week before in closed session and as you have individually with us over a period of months," Yaroslavsky said to Chernof on Tuesday.
The hospital recently received a 23-day ultimatum to correct dangerous conditions in the emergency room. Last month, a 43-year-old woman racked with pain on the hospital lobby floor died after pleading in vain for treatment. In February and early March, a man at King-Harbor lingered with a brain tumor for four days without receiving treatment. Family and friends finally drove him to another county hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery.
King-Harbor is slated to receive a final federal inspection in July that will determine its fate.
State law requires that if the supervisors are to discuss matters in closed session, they must post those topics on their agenda. Over the last month, such postings have included the May 9 death of Edith Isabel Rodriguez -- who died in the custody of county police after lying untreated on the hospital floor for 45 minutes -- and "significant exposure to litigation." No items related to emergency plans for the hospital's closure have been listed.
"A board can't simply close the doors out of concern that someone might sue if they heard what was being discussed," said Terry Francke, general counsel and founder of Californians Aware, a nonprofit, open-government advocacy group. "If that were the standard, you'd never hear discussion about anything politically controversial in open session."
County Counsel Raymond G. Fortner Jr. said the board did not violate the open-meeting law, known as the Ralph M. Brown Act, although contingency planning had been mentioned in closed discussions of possible litigation against the county stemming from Rodriguez's death.
