Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

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Mark Kindt
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Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2016 11:06 am

Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Sat Feb 03, 2018 3:58 pm

Yes, I understand that hospitals close and that hospital systems consolidate. I get that. BUT...

City leaders in both Parma and Cleveland Heights worked closely with Metro Health System and now each community has a new hospital to serve their citizens.

City leaders in both Massillon and Dayton are fighting to save their local hospitals. --Fighting to save invaluable civic infrastructure needed for emergency preparedness.

In contrast, our city leaders fought to close our local hospital. In fact, they still robustly and vigorously defend the closure of Lakewood Hospital.

There's something wrong with this picture, isn't there?

It reminds me of the film "Fail Safe" where the President (Henry Fonda) has to drop a nuclear weapon on New York City.

What occurred in Lakewood is just about as strange. Our mayor and other civic leaders fought to close our hospital, not to save it.

Sometime later this year or, perhaps, early next year, the wrecking ball and the bulldozers will begin the demolition of Lakewood Hospital.

For this outcome, we can thank Mayor Summers, the leadership at LHA and LHF, and an overly-compliant city council. We can also thank a variety of community cheerleaders who supported the demise of an invaluable community asset.


Dan Alaimo
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Dan Alaimo » Sat Feb 03, 2018 4:31 pm

Yes, it will be a very dubious mission accomplished.
But it is inevitable considering how determined the "builders" are and the lack of public will to oppose or depose them.


“Never let a good crisis go to waste." - Winston Churchill (Quote later appropriated by Rahm Emanuel)
Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Sat Feb 03, 2018 4:51 pm

Committed citizens and volunteer lawyers went to court in several separate cases to forestall the closure of Lakewood Hospital. The city administration participated in a "scorched earth" litigation defense strategy to ensure the closure of Lakewood Hospital.

After years of litigation, several court orders, and "push-the-envelope" opposition from the city administration, long-withheld public documents finally became available for review last year. I and others have written about the contents of those documents here and elsewhere. Other documents appear to have been destroyed; many have yet to be produced for public review. Many documents are not available absent further expensive and time-consuming litigation, since they are not held by public entities.

In 2013 and 2014, the Lakewood Hospital Association appears to have conducted a "sham" proposal process via its use of a third-party consultant, Subsidium; a firm no longer in existence. This firm was retained to identify potential healthcare providers to run Lakewood Hospital. To a former government antitrust attorney, this proposal process has indicators of being conducted as a "sham". Why? Well, the Subsidium documents and related email seem to establish that the single "bidder" with the only proposal to run the hospital, Metro Health System, had its bid completely ignored and disregarded by the LHA reviewers.

This bid was ignored for 6 months, yet it was a bid to operate the hospital for the balance of the current lease term and invest $100,000,000 ($10M per year for 10 years) (!)

Incredibly enough, the LHA reviewers (the so-called "Select Committee") only conducted negotiations with the LHA sole member, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, who had proposed to them, not to operate the hospital and complete the term of its existing lease, but to close and liquidate the facility.

If Subsidium was retained to solicit proposals from national healthcare providers to run the hospital, this entire process was subverted by the LHA review committee.

In fact, documents show that both Subsidium and one LHA board member were critical of the decision to exclude the Metro proposal and proceed with the proposal to close and liquidate the hospital. These documents have been previously posted on the Deck. Subsidium described the proposal from CCF as having no material value to the community.

The proposal most likely to save the hospital, the lease revenues to the city, and the employee income tax revenues to the city was tacitly rejected by intentional disregard. Consequently stalled, Metro withdrew in the fall of 2014.

Mayor Summers, as ex officio board member of LHA, was on the select LHA committee that ignored the Metro proposal.

Why would any elected official ever negotiate for an outcome so adverse to his city?

What occurred makes no conceivable sense from any legitimate public policy perspective.
Last edited by Mark Kindt on Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.


james fitzgibbons
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby james fitzgibbons » Sat Feb 03, 2018 4:58 pm

Mark, it is incredulous that it could have happened right here in Lakewood right under our noses. If we can not do anything legally how about "Tar and Feathers" for our fearless city leaders. How evil and ignorant can one group of city officials be? I did not think it would be possible to find a small group of people that have no sense of decency or loyalty to the people that elected them. Something is " Fishy ". Not even 1 dissenter. How do they sleep at night? I said it before and I am going to say it again, I was a Catholic Eucharistic Minister at Lakewood Hospital for 14 years and when the hospital closed it ended my ministry in Lakewood that I so valued. What our city officials have stolen from the people of Lakewood is a sin.
Last edited by james fitzgibbons on Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.


Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:10 pm

Mr. Fitzgibbons, I honor you for your service to your community and your important ministry to those in physical and spiritual need. I continue to write on this topic, because I need to understand how our community lost a hospital that so many other communities would prize. Best regard.


Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Sun Feb 04, 2018 12:22 pm

To continue my presentation:

The Letter of Intent to close the hospital was announced at a City Hall press conference in January 2015. Sometime after that it fell apart as one of its signatories, the Lakewood Hospital Foundation, dropped-out.

If we rely on the court testimony of Council-member O'Leary and the City's own legal briefs, there was no agreement among the City, LHA and CCF until well after December 1, 2015.

Not only did LHA and the City ignore the substantial written proposal of Metro Health System in 2014, they then ignored written expressions of interest by Surgical Development Partners made in 2015 to operate Lakewood Hospital and/or acquire other hospital-related property (850 Columbia Road).

Here we can again witness the commitment of the mayor, the LHA board, and its sole member, CCF, to close down the hospital rather than to keep Lakewood Hospital in continuing operation.

The mayor subsequently described the Subsidium process as merely a "confirmatory" bidding process, evidently to "confirm" that no qualified health-care provider could or would operate the hospital as a going-concern.

None of the Subsidium documents released by the City show this at all. Subsidium was seeking proposals for the continued operation of the hospital, not its liquidation and closure.

However, proposals from qualified health-care providers to operate Lakewood Hospital as a going-concern were simply ignored.

The process conducted by the City, LHA, LHF, and CCF in 2013 and 2014 resulted in what I can only describe as a "steered bid"; all occurring in a truly remarkable case of internal self-dealing at the expense of the City's contractual interests, revenue interests, and ownership interests.

At this point, both Metro Health System and Surgical Development Partners had strong grounds to litigate on federal antitrust grounds as excluded bidders.

It gets worse.


Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Sun Feb 04, 2018 5:30 pm

Aside from what I have previously described as indications of a "sham" bidding or "sham" proposal process, another indicator sticks-out like a sore thumb.

The City contract with LHA is obviously a public contract between the municipality and the association related to municipally-owned assets and valuable municipal contract rights.

From public documents, we also know that Subsidium was not hired by the City, but was hired and paid for with LHA funds. (This fact is actually misrepresented by Subsidium in at least one of its offering documents where it represents itself as the City's consultant.)

There is no possible or plausible legal explanation for why the city administration via the mayor decided to circumvented the normal public bidding requirements related to public contracts.
Clearly, by its plain language, the Letter of Intent was designed to 1.) change a public contract; 2.) sell or exchange public assets; 3.) change or terminate certain lease revenues to the city; and, 4.) address public inter-municipality tax issues.


These are obviously matters related to a public municipal contract.

Again, we see the mayor participating in a closed, private, and non-public process. This process was likely in violation of Ohio law.

--No public appraisal related to Lakewood Hospital was ever conducted prior to its closure.

--No public bidding was ever conducted to solicit healthcare providers to operate Lakewood Hospital as a going-concern.

--No public bidding occurred with respected to the tens of millions of dollars that were ultimately liquidated and conveyed (or will be conveyed) via the Master Agreement.

This disregard and circumvention of normal public bidding processes clearly stands as another powerful indicator that a sham bidding process was conducted that resulted in a steered contract award to the incumbent sole-member of the Lakewood Hospital Association, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.


Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:53 am

From 2015, there are also other public documents (emails) between the city administration and Cuyahoga County officials that appear to be designed to send the county the message that the City had reached a deal with CCF and that there was no reason for any further discussions with Metro as sought by some city council-members.

My argument on this point is that this may be additional evidence that the City, LHA and CCF organized a sham proposal process designed to exclude those healthcare providers who had proposed or were trying to propose plans for the continuing operation of Lakewood Hospital as a ongoing-concern.

Finally, the Ohio Ethics Commission opinion letters issued in 2015 seem to make it clear that the private, non-public negotiations conducted by the mayor on behalf of the City with LHA, LHF and CCF were conducted while the mayor was in a conflict-of-interest related to LHF. This conflict of interest was described by the OEC as a misdemeanor violation of Ohio law.

The documents that are available demonstrate that the city administration ignored both its written code of conduct and state law by entering into private, non-public negotiations with regard to a major municipal contract and did so in a way that was tainted with a conflict-of-interest; but, more importantly, did so in a way that prejudiced the only legitimate bidder and apparently steered the final contract award to the insiders that organized the private, non-public negotiation. This transaction resulted in the liquidation of tens of millions of dollars in financial and physical assets to the disadvantage of the City and the closure of an invaluable municipal asset and community resource.

As I have said previously, by this point both Metro and SPD had viable claims to proceed on violations of federal antitrust law as excluded bidders. (To date, no claims have been brought.)

At this point, each of the parties to the Letter of Intent may have also placed themselves in jeopardy with respect to other legal action under federal antitrust laws as possible defendants.


Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Mon Feb 05, 2018 2:00 pm

The City Law Department has previously confirmed that the City had no contract with Subsidium and did not retain that firm as a vendor.

Despite this Subsidium did, however, misrepresent itself as working on behalf of the City.

The City had a long-term contract with Lakewood Hospital Association and LHA retained and paid Subsidium.

Did LHA violate the Vendor Code of Ethics by this or other actions that it took?


You be the judge:
Attachments
Vendors Code Of Ethics Lakewood Ohio -- Highlighted.jpg
Vendors Code Of Ethics Lakewood Ohio -- Highlighted.jpg (436.81 KiB) Viewed 4783 times


Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Mon Feb 05, 2018 2:13 pm

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.


Brian Essi
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Brian Essi » Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:50 pm

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.


Mr. Kindt,

Within the public records I've received is correspondence in late 2014 to Mike Summers from an unlikely LHA Trustee questioning conflict-of-interest issues about the then anticipated January 2015 LHA vote and roll-out.

I will try to post the public record in the near future.

BTW--your analysis in this thread is awesome and build logically from the Civic Accountability Series.


David Anderson has no legitimate answers
Brian Essi
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Brian Essi » Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:49 am

Brian Essi wrote:
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.


Mr. Kindt,

Within the public records I've received is correspondence in late 2014 to Mike Summers from an unlikely LHA Trustee questioning conflict-of-interest issues about the then anticipated January 2015 LHA vote and roll-out.

I will try to post the public record in the near future.

BTW--your analysis in this thread is awesome and build logically from the Civic Accountability Series.


What did Summers do about these conflicts?

What else did this LHA trustee do to clear her concerns?

Recall that Becky Patton was the LHA trustee who said she did not like the way members of the public voted--claiming that such voters were too ignorant to understand the hospital issue.

Becky Patton Concerned About Conflicts of Interest.jpeg
Becky Patton Concerned About Conflicts of Interest.jpeg (82.47 KiB) Viewed 4651 times


David Anderson has no legitimate answers
Mark Kindt
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Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:41 am

Mr. Essi, thank you for posting this document.

I will again emphasize that we are witnessing a closed process conducted by insiders, most of whom are private individuals, many of whom have other relationships with LHA or CCF.

The agreement between LHA and the City of Lakewood is a PUBLIC contract. Normal and routine procedures regarding this public contract have been disregarded and circumvented by this closed, private process.

I am not going to parse my way though the various private conflicts-of-interest that may have existed among LHA, LHF, and CCF. I simply do not have reliable information to review on this topic.

The Board of Trustees of Lakewood Hospital Association understood that they functioned under a public contract with the City of Lakewood and understood why elected officials (a mayor and two council-members) always served with them.

So, if you've followed along to this point, do you have any question about why I am stridently calling for municipal reform in Lakewood?

The other question that keeps crossing my mind is "Does the city government of Lakewood commonly ignore, disregard, and/or circumvent its Code of Ethics or Ohio laws on other kinds of projects?"


Mark Kindt
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Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2016 11:06 am

Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:42 am

On December 10, 2014, Ms. Patton sent an email to Mayor Summers and Ms. Frye of Subsdium. I quote the relevant passage:

"Two specific areas that I am concerned about. First the vote has to be more than a simple majority. I would like to recommend 2/3 majority which can be challenged if the governing documents state something else.
Secondly, I am concerned that the issue of conflict of interest can be raised after the vote taken by individuals not liking the decision. I think I am almost there that I would be comfortable if the conflicts were declared by the individuals but they still could vote. I know at the end of the day City Council has the heavy lift. I just think our process to that point should be easily defendable."


This LHA board member is expressly recognizing that some LHA board members have conflicts-of-interest and that board members with conflicts-of-interest should declare those conflicts but still be authorized to vote on the matter coming to a future vote.

Presumably, Ms. Patton's recommendation for a two/thirds majority vote is that if members did vote with conflicts-of-interest, then LHA could still achieve a simple majority in favor of the Letter of Intent, later being able to argue that the conflicts were irrelevant.

This email establishes that Ms. Patton saw conflicts-of-interest at the Lakewood Hospital Association. This emails demonstrates that Mayor Summers was informed in writing about conflict-of-issue issues.

Despite these conflict-of-interest issues, LHA proceeded with its vote!

This is exactly why Ohio law requires public bidding with respect to public assets and procedural openness on public contracts -- to prevent these kinds of insider and conflict-ridden outcomes.

Next we will look at another written document where a key insider again confirms exactly what Ms. Patton was concerned with on conflict-of-interest issues.


Mark Kindt
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Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2016 11:06 am

Re: Coming Soon -- Demolition of Lakewood Hospital

Postby Mark Kindt » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:18 am

On March 18, 2015 and in writing, Council-member Bullock advised the Mayor, the Law Director and Council-member Madigan of conflict-of-interest issues related to the Lakewood Hospital Association vote that recommended closing the hospital.

Then, he goes so far as to suggest the very questionable course of action that he and Council-member Madigan change their LHA votes to "abstain" to mitigate potential claims of conflict-of-interest. (See, 2nd page of attachment).

At a minimum, we can conclude, based upon these documents, that Mayor Summers received two separate written descriptions of conflict-of-interest problems from currently serving Lakewood Hospital Association Board of Trustees members (Patton; Bullock).

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.
Attachments
LKWD - MDGN %26 SMMRS000095.pdf
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