Our View: County should have better access

It’s interesting when a politician starts openly fighting for public access to meetings.

Yes, that statement comes from a somewhat jaded outlook, as it most often has been politicians who have argued the case for less transparency, not more. So imagine our surprise when Sweetwater County Commissioner John Kolb started talking about being declined access to committee meetings involving Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County’s Board of Trustees. His comments to us about the problem certainly got our attention.

Kolb alleges he was kept out of committee meetings because those meetings did not have a quorum of hospital board representatives. He said because they did not have a quorum, they did not have to open those meetings to him or anyone else. While committee meetings aren’t often the subject of public attention and scrutiny, we find it problematic the county commissioners’ liaison for the hospital is blocked from attending those meetings.

At the most basic level, such action gives the impression the hospital is trying to hide something they’re working on, especially if they’re barring an elected representative who was selected to report their activities. The county owns MHSC and a county liaison should have access to all of the meetings hosted at MHSC. We would argue they should even have access to the executive sessions, but should leave the actual management of the hospital to the board they place.

Initially, we believed the county commissioners were trying to micromanage the hospital board as a result of their disagreements with board members and their proposed ambulatory surgery center plans. However, after Kolb discussed the state statutes involving hospital boards with us, it became clear to us that hospital boards don’t operate under the same structure as other county boards. They’re required to do much more. As such, we’re siding with the county on this.

MHSC isn’t a bad place and we think its board is doing a good job. However we think they should be more willing to allow Kolb or any other commissioner more access to their meetings.

This isn’t a situation similar to the conflict of interest that existed when former County Commissioner Debbie Dellai-Boese was battling with the hospital while her husband, a doctor who had his hospital privileges revoked, had an active lawsuit filed against MHSC. This is a case where elected officials who have a vested interest in the hospital are trying to get information they should have access to.