Update Friday, Sept. 17: As we forecast in the article below, the five men on the Board of the Lake County Hospital Tax District voted against lone opponent Marilyn Bainter to continue collecting a 1 mill property tax and giving it to the two local hospitals without any requirements on how the approximately $10.1 million would be spent. See below for the Background:
Thursday, Sept. 16, 2010 - Tonight, Tuesday the second public hearing for the Board of the Lake County Hospital District will take place.
Even though many citizens will provide public input, like they did at last week's meeting, on reasons why the tax should not be continued, I expect the five hospital supported members of the Board will vote against sixth member, Marilyn Bainter, and vote to continue a 1 mill tax on your property (residential and commercial) for another year.
That tax, using current North Lake County property valuations, will generate approximately $10-million in tax collections, which will be roughly split into two buckets of money and given to the two local hospitals, Leesburg, and Waterman, without any oversight requirements, or any specific, targeted spending areas that can be verified.
Prior meetings have resulted in both sides of the issue trading reasons and emotions about why the tax should continue, or not continue.
I won't relist many of the issues, because they are listed on articles on this blog HERE, or a summary of the issues are on the new unofficial website setup by the tax critics HERE because the Board has refused to create a website to provide public information.
The Board majority (excluding Marilyn Bainter) has REFUSED to:
- Create a website to share District documents with the public.
- Authorize video taping of Board meetings for the public record.
- Re-interpret the regulation to allow them to select ANY millage rate between 0 and 1, and then selected gradually reducing millage percents until the rate was zero.
- Request the State legislators to change the law to allow them to specify any millage rate between 0 and 1 percent, then select a declining millage rate.
- Implement any type of rules to define what are acceptable, and non-acceptable areas to spend the tax funds on.
- Implement any type of requirement to require a specific "audit trail" of how the tax funds were spent by the hospitals. Basically, each hospital gets around $5-million in a check, and puts it in their general fund and spends it where they want. That is known as commingling, and even a realtor who gets a deposit on a house is prohibited from doing that, but the Hospital District law does not.
- Initiate any revised regulation that contains the above oversight requirements and send it to the Lake County State legislators to revamp the wording to provide oversight.
- Schedule or initiate a referendum to let the North EAST Lake County residents actually VOTE to approve the tax. They never got to vote on this issue, and the laws seem to allow it.
- Initiate a full North Lake County referendum to allow the voters to determine for the first time in 20-30 years whether the tax should continue.
So, since the Board has consistently refused to implement the above solutions, here are the future actions that may happen:
- The current five hospital supporting Board members will become more public than they wish, due to honk & waves, articles, and email campaigns.
- The reputation of the hospitals will slowly erode as public anger increases over the tax and lack of oversight. Facts about high staff salaries, excessive advertising campaigns, expensive, high profit "optional" services, etc. will also help reduce public confidence that their funds are well spent. The tax is already a monthly topic at one Tea Party meeting, as well as some Republican groups.
- More demonstrations will take place.
- Three of the Board members are leaving the Board this year (wonder why?), and the hospitals have put up three replacement candidates, and the tax critics have put up three candidates. Basically, the pro-Hospital and pro-tax people all have last names starting in B, so if you remember that "Bees ARE BAD, and will STING you in your Wallet", you can determine who NOT to vote for.
- Legal research will be initiated in the area of fiscal responsibility of District officials and any court cased that define their responsibility to ensure proper oversight and uses of tax funds.
Some Solutions:
- If the Board instead implemented all the actions mentioned above that they have refused, it would help reduce the tension, and improve the credibility of the tax AND the Board.
- If the Hospital leaders decided that they had a good run with getting the tax for 30-40 years, and volunteered to allow the Board to select ZERO %
vj
