The Observation Deck

Mark Kindt wrote:Both Patton and Bullock recognized that the conflict-of-issue problems among LHA, LHF and CCF had the potential to impede the effort to close Lakewood Hospital.

But only elected official Bullock, wanted to falsify the records. Correct?

What bothers me is that many of the other insiders didn't trust the public vote, or the public's right to know what was happening with their property.

But for Bullock to play this BS then run for higher office.

.

The document that I posted containing the email from Council-member Bullock must speak for itself. It is a City of Lakewood public document.

The text in response has been redacted [in black] presumably as having attorney-client privileged content.

We will never know what advice he was given by the Law Director.

Council-member Bullock has argued forcefully and with personal conviction that no conflict-of-interest occurred based upon his understanding of legal advice. I fully accept his position as stated to me.

Attorneys are like prostitutes they will take any side as long as it pays. But I have to respect the prostitutes, they know what they are.

Attorneys are like prostitutes they will take any side as long as it pays. But I have to respect the prostitutes, they know what they are.

And that relates to anything, anywhere, anytime? Check out The Price Is Right at 10AM weekldays. It'll occupy your time.

Richard Baker wrote:Attorneys are like prostitutes they will take any side as long as it pays. But I have to respect the prostitutes, they know what they are.

Yes, Mr. Baker, I've logged almost 39 years in that profession (!) I am not unaware of this common simile.

My earlier comments were not made to criticize the legal advice from the Law Director--believe me I've done that elsewhere on the Deck--but to emphasize that we don't know what it actually was.

The City Law Department has the right under appropriate circumstances not to produce documents to the public that are protected by the attorney-client privilege.

Mark Kindt wrote:Within hours and days of the announcement of the Letter of Intent (Jan 2015) to close Lakewood Hospital, the general public was questioning the circumstances and conduct of the City, LHA, LHF and CCF.

Within weeks, letters were being written and sent to the Ohio Ethics Commission raising questions about potential conflict-of-interest issues.

The participants from LHA, LHF, the City, and CCF knew that what they were doing was problematic:

1. By the end of September 2014, Lisa Frye from Subsidium had advised the Select Committee that the offer from CCF had no material advantage to the community. Her words, not mine.

2. Shortly after that, Mr. Gorton (a longtime LHA Trustee) prepared a memorandum for negotiations with CCF that argued that the CCF proposal was of little value to them and that an arrangement with Metro Health System would be a better fit for Lakewood.

3. By December 2014, another LHA Trustee (Ms. Patton) is flagging her concerns about conflicts-of-interest and proposing a problematic work-around.

4. By February 2015, LHA and LHF insiders (Mr. Gable; Mr. Haber) were advising the city administration in writing that the economic benefit numbers for the transaction to close the hospital were "bogus". Again, their words not mine.

5. By March 2015, LHA Ex Officio Trustee Bullock (a City Council Member) was advising the city administration and his fellow public trustees of potential conflict-of-interest problems and an improper work-around.

6. Around this time, State Senator Skindell (also a lawyer AND a former council member) had advised Lakewood City Council in writing of specific legal and procedural defects in the private, non-public process to close the hospital.

7. By Spring 2015, the Ohio Ethics Commission had identified at least two specific conflict-of-interest situations in their written opinion letters.

At anytime, the city administration could have withdrawn from the Letter of Intent, like Lakewood Hospital Foundation did, and commence a new and legitimate public review on the future of Lakewood Hospital.

Because they did not, we no longer have a hospital in our community.

The parade of conflict-of-interest problems rolls-on.

Now, the next conflict-of-interest is something of a whopper!

Members of the 2015 Lakewood City Council touted that they had retained an "independent" consultant to assist them is studying the Letter of Intent proposal to close the hospital.

Guess what? The so-called independent consultant retained by the city administration in 2015 to help city council had a major conflict-of-interest, since this consultant also did consulting work for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

This fact was undisclosed to the public and was only discovered by the release of public documents under a court order against the City.

This list of conflict-of-interest problems is why I have chosen to describe the city administration as "conflict-ridden" or "tainted with conflicts." It is a reasonable conclusion to make based upon actual public documents.

Many of the Trustees of Lakewood Hospital Association understood that other fellow Trustees had professional, business or fiduciary relationships with either the Cleveland Clinic Foundation or with the Lakewood Hospital Foundation. (This is most clearly represented by Ms. Patton's email; posted and quoted above).

In the context of the proposed Letter of Intent that would ultimately transfer funds and assets to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and end the hospital that they served as trustees for, they understood (or had a duty to understand) that LHA Trustees with CCF relationships were in deep and problematic conflicts-of-interest given the plan to let CCF close the hospital.

At this point, the Trustees understood that a material, credible and substantial offer to maintain Lakewood Hospital as a community hospital had been effectively rejected by them in their Step Two Committee where these conflicts-of-interest were clearly manifest.

This decision to pass on the Metro Health System proposal in favor of the Cleveland Clinic’s plan to liquidate and close the hospital subverted the only purpose for the existence of the Lakewood Hospital Association.

Clearly, the Trustees of Lakewood Hospital Association failed in a rather fundamental manner in their efforts to manage a municipal contract for Lakewood Hospital.

The Subsidium process launched by the Lakewood Hospital Association in 2013 was defective from the very start, because the Trustees of Lakewood Hospital Association no longer operated independently of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (as sole member of LHA) and because many Trustees had Cleveland Clinic-related conflicts-of-interest.

The CCF "decanting" plan as well as the interlocking conflicts-of-interest across LHA, CCF and LHF resulted in the gradual and then final cannibalization of Lakewood Hospital.

From the start, these same interlocking conflicts-of-interest doomed the Metro Health System proposal (to operate the hospital) to malign neglect, and, perhaps, intentional suppression as well.

Normal processes that govern the internal operations of charitable organizations were subverted by non-resolvable conflicts-of-interest.

However, more importantly, normal laws that govern public contracts were circumvented or short-circuited.

Those laws, long on the books, were enacted to prevent these kinds of conflict-ridden insider-driven outcomes.

A recently re-elected council-member stated to me that Metro Health System did not have the financial capability to execute its 2014 proposal to operate Lakewood Hospital.

Would the leadership at Metro Health System really spend months on submitting proposals that they believed that they could not execute? Unlikely.

We also know (from the hard-work of the public interest lawyers that are litigating with the City) that the city administration had no meaningful financial analysis done with respect to the plan to close the hospital.

We have to take the documents at their word as we find them. Metro Health System proposed to invest $100,000,000 in Lakewood Hospital over a ten-year period.

If you disagree with any of these statements, I encourage you to provide documents (or other authentic information) that tends to show that Metro Health System did not have the financial capacity to execute on its proposals made to the Lakewood Hospital Association in 2014.

I am not moving off of my position until I have had the chance to actually review such documents. (If they actually even exist.)

It was Jennifer Pae, who does not hold a CPA license, nor an accounting or finance degree, who declared Metro unable to finance any future projects. Nor did she have any access to Metro’s financial records, but hey, that didn’t stop her from determining their strength.

From this thread:

http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... 167#p96167

It’s actually amusing/disgusting to read it after the fact.

Ms. Conant, thank you for posting this link. I was not a member of the Observation Deck at that time. I will give this a good look.

Documents that would convince me that Metro did not have sufficient financial capacity to execute its proposals would had to have been created and dated between the spring and fall of 2014 to be credible.

I will also ask Mr. Essi if the City has produced documents to him under the court orders, that would reflect such analysis.

Bridget Conant wrote:It was Jennifer Pae, who does not hold a CPA license, nor an accounting or finance degree, who declared Metro unable to finance any future projects. Nor did she have any access to Metro’s financial records, but hey, that didn’t stop her from determining their strength.

From this thread:
http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... 167#p96167
It’s actually amusing/disgusting to read it after the fact.

Pae has a fiduciary responsibility to Lakewood Ohio, yet she writes, devoid of professional analysis or depth, as though she's an agent of the Cleveland Clinic.

Thank you, Mark Kindt, for all the analysis you've provided over these last few months.

It has been an invaluable asset for the public to learn and try to understand what has transpired over the last 3 years.

As it's been said before, this is all about Mayor Summers and his friends-the public be damned.

Nothing the mayor's hit man, Tom Bull(y)ock, can say will change how sick this real estate deal is.

Thanks too for sticking to your guns, all in the service of the truth.

I hope Lakewood is through being bullied by you-know-who!