Hospital Paid $1.58 Million to Block County Wing

Community Memorial Hospital spent nearly $1.6 million on its successful spring campaign to block the county hospital from building a new outpatient center, making it easily the most expensive local campaign in county history.

“They’ve got the record going away,” said Bruce Bradley, county assistant registrar of voters. “We’re new to something like this. This is Sacramento politics.”

Under the auspices of Taxpayers for Quality Health Care, nonprofit Community Memorial spent $17.06 per vote to defeat the March 26 countywide referendum known as Measure X. Voters rejected it by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

Most of the hospital’s money went into slick campaign brochures, radio and newspaper ads, and legal fees related to the ballot measure, according to finance reports filed with the county Wednesday.

“It’s an extraordinary amount to be spent to destroy the safety net of this county,” said Pierre Durand, director of the county’s Health Care Agency. “These are costs being paid by taxpayers because Community Memorial is a nonprofit hospital, so there is a tax subsidy taking place here.”

But a Community Memorial spokesman defended the campaign expenses, saying the hospital was simply protecting itself from neighboring Ventura County Medical Center encroaching on its business. He said the $56-million outpatient center would have been used to lure away private patients.

“We never wanted to spend the money,” said Doug Dowie, with the Los Angeles consulting firm Fleishman-Hillard, which handles public relations for the hospital.

Community Memorial would have preferred to co-sponsor a study with the county to determine the area’s health care needs, Dowie said, but the county declined.

Since the election, he pointed out, the county has received a state license that enables it to establish its own managed care program and offer health insurance coverage to the public.

“The county’s intent has come into clear focus,” he said. “It’s satisfying that the voters can see that what we were saying during the campaign was clearly not shouting fire in a crowded theater.”

County officials said there are no plans to seek out privately insured patients. Instead, they said, the state license will be used to help keep a lid on the costs of providing health coverage for about 2,700 county employees and also to prepare for managed Medi-Cal.

In all, Community Memorial spent $1,586,398 on the Measure X campaign, according to campaign finance statements.

Some of the expenses included $347,655 for the services of the Sacramento-based consulting firm of Russo, Marsh & Raper; $161,690 for campaign staff workers; $94,135 for mailers and door hangers, and $62,400 to operate a phone bank.

“The $1.5 million they spent stands as a monument to the fleecing of taxpayers,” said former Ventura County Supervisor Madge Schaefer, who was a spokeswoman for a rival campaign organization known as SMART, for Saving Money as Responsible Taxpayers.

“This hospital and campaign must be an embarrassment to every charity-minded, fair-minded hospital board of directors in the country,” Schaefer said.

In comparison to Community Memorial, Saving Money as Responsible Taxpayers spent $117,000--or $2.14 per vote--on its failed campaign in support of the county hospital project.

Community Memorial’s campaign expenses do not include what the hospital has spent on an ongoing lawsuit it filed nearly two years ago to stop the public hospital from accepting private patients.

Community Memorial officials have declined to say how much they have spent on attorneys’ fees.

But County Counsel James McBride said the county has spent more than $700,000 defending itself against Community Memorial’s suit.