What we saw Wednesday, July 10, 2024 at the hastily-called Imperial Valley Healthcare District press conference was a self-serving, congratulatory pat on the back for the seven appointed board members of the Imperial Valley Healthcare District (IVHD), Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, and Senator Steve Padilla.
While the purpose of the deeply flawed, poorly drafted legislation known as AB918 is seemingly to provide better access to healthcare and improve the quality of healthcare for Imperial Valley, we are far from meeting that goal. High-fives and platitudes can’t hide some key facts:
- AB918 is proving to be a seriously negative disrupter in the healthcare of our county’s diverse population. Many warned of this early on; others are only now becoming aware of its flaws and its impact on their communities.
- A prime example: the IVHD board admits that it cannot meet the obligation of AB918 to identify a permanent funding source for the IVHD, nor can it hold an election for said funding source in time to meet the law’s mandate.
- To compensate for this failure, Garcia and Padilla have made it clear that the IVHD may seize the tax dollars of the people in the Heffernan (Calexico) and PMHD (Niland, Westmorland, Salton City Area, Calipatria and Brawley) areas to prop up the unknown finances of a state-mandated countywide healthcare district. The new district divisions are yet to be approved and the seizure process remains unclear.
- Statements that consolidation will absolutely result in savings for the people of Imperial County has still yet to be proven by any measure—nor have explicit details of such “savings” been shared with the public, if they exist.
- The IVHD board has not met its burden of full transparency and public accountability as evidenced by continued poor public outreach, a barely functional website, a lack of professional, comprehensive fiscal and financial analyses (which should have been conducted BEFORE the bill was ever introduced) and an absence of true public review, participation, or even token dialogue. Rather, the IVHD has relied solely on last-minute, perfunctory “open meetings” where members of the public have been dismissed and dehumanized when questions have been asked and concerns have been expressed.
- IVHD wrongly asserted that PMHD is to blame for an incomplete feasibility study. Garcia and Padilla are the ones who mandated the use of two incomplete, unreliable feasibility studies to speed the process. When members of the public rightfully raised concerns earlier this year about these incomplete feasibility studies, the IVHD did in fact acknowledge that those studies were unusable in their current form. The IVHD’s press conference finger-pointing is simply aimed in the wrong direction.
- The IVHD and AB918’s authors seemingly have only one interest: to implement this flawed law at any cost and contrary to the public interest. They off-handedly speak of “repurposing hospitals” and dismiss valid public concerns—all in the face of a detailed lawsuit that has raised very critical issues with the law.
All of this could have been avoided had either Garcia or Padilla introduced amendments to address the inherent—and well-documented—flaws. But they both failed to listen to the warnings, leaving the courts as the public’s only remedy. Yet even as they call for a stop to the legal action, they and the IVHD board still haven’t addressed the flaws. Sadly, it appears we must rely on the courts and voters’ continued protests to right the ship the two set towards sinking.
Our diverse county’s residents would be best served by slowing the process, allowing the courts (and voters) to have a say, and re-starting the process with a well-planned education and outreach effort to better understand the needs of residents and realities of funding and operating a single healthcare district in this rural county. And by bringing all this— establishment of and funding for a new district—directly to the voters, as required by law. There is simply too much at stake to fumble through AB918’s rushed process.
Signed,
Imperial Valley Coalition for Sustainable Healthcare Facilities