Commentary

February 7th, 2008

Escondido forms Ad Hoc Committee to meet in secret with PPH

by lyle e davis

It troubles me to print the above headline.

I confirmed with Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler that the city of Escondido plans to create an ad-hoc committee to meet and confer with the Palomar Pomerado Health District. I also confirmed with both her and Escondido Councilmember Ed Gallo, that the ad-hoc committee meetings will not be open to the public or press.

Legally, they are entitled to run their meetings in private. But, given the secrecy, the stealth, the less than forthcoming actions of the Palomar Pomerado Health District, we think it’s time to be open. The public has a right to know what, exactly, is going on.

There appears to have been misrepresentations made by the District to persuade area voters to support Proposition BB which dumped $496 million into the hopper - and the magical allocation of $73 million, later $93 million, to refurbish the downtown campus of the Palomar Medical Center has somehow shrunk to $3 million. Meanwhile, the budget for the new hospital on the west side of Escondido has grown like Topsy. At one time the Proposition BB budget soared to $1.2 billion. They have shaved it down to $990 million; still $494 million over the $496 million we, the voters, gave them.

It is, perhaps, no wonder PPH wishes to keep these discussions private. It seems to us, however, that the city of Escondido, being once burnt should now be twice shy. They must surely be aware that their constituents are asking harder and harder questions. They need to know from their City Council members just what is going on. Hiding behind the law that does not require Brown Act compliance won’t accomplish this. While nothing in the Brown Act requires them to open the meetings to the public there is also nothing in the Brown Act that prohibits them from being open with the people.

Mayor Pfeiler told us that the end results of the private discussions within this Advisory Committee would be presented to the full City Council, and to the public, when all the details had been hammered out. She is absolutely correct. That is all that is required. By law.

PPH has not kept the city of Escondido informed. The lines of communication are, at best, tenuous. PPH has declined to return our phone calls in conjunction with a story we did on December 20th, 2007 (“Mr. Mike's Traveling Miracle Medicine Show” see http://thecommunitypaper.com/archive/2007/12_20/index.php) nor have they responded to our invitation to write a Letter to the Editor to tell their side of the story.

We did receive one phone call from a PPH spokesperson who claimed The Paper was a ‘muckraker.” We would counsel that in order to be a muckraker there has to be muck to be raked. We documented every item in our story. There appears to have been, and still is, plenty of muck to rake. All the more reason for more openness and less secrecy. It is, after all, the public’s money.

The issues to be covered by such an ad hoc committe include: development of the Downtown Medical Campus, development at the ERTC, and implementation of the Development Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding with the City.

We ask and hope the Escondido City Council agrees to make these meetings open.