By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
jonathan@wdnweb.com
Staff Writer
CHOCOWINITY — A Beaufort County commissioner said his board probably should have held its own public hearing on the future of financially-troubled Beaufort Regional Health System.
The public hearing might have been required by state statute, Commissioner Jay McRoy told the Down East Republicans Thursday night.
McRoy said the BRHS Board of Commissioners did hold public hearings on the issue, but indicated the county commissioners might have been well served to follow suit.
“The hospital board held a public hearing, but the county commissioners didn’t,” he said. “And probably, under the state statute, we should have held a public hearing. Twenty-twenty hindsight, it would have been easy to have done. When the hospital held it, we could’ve said it was a joint public hearing of the county commissioners and that, but we didn’t say it at that time.”
This was an indication of one reason the commissioners opted to hold a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 9 at Beaufort County Community College.
The stated purpose of the hearing is to receive comments on Greenville-based University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina’s offer to affiliate with BRHS.
On Jan. 18, the BRHS board voted 7-2 to endorse the offer from UHS, which has proposed leasing the hospital for 30 years and $30 million, with an option to buy the health system buildings for $10 million at the end of the lease.
Since the county owns the buildings, it’s up to the commissioners to accept or reject the BRHS board’s recommendation of the UHS proposal, the only one left on the table after other suitors withdrew.
“And so we’re trying to make sure we follow the law and do it the right way,” McRoy told the Down East club Thursday night.
In a follow-up interview, McRoy was asked if it was his opinion the commissioners had violated N.C. General Statutes 131E-13, which relate to the lease or sale of hospital facilities.
“What I meant to say was the lawyers questioned whether perhaps we should have held a public hearing,” he replied. “The hospital board had the public hearings and we … sat up on the stage with them, but we didn’t actually say at the time that it was a public hearing for both of us.”
The BRHS board actually held two public hearings, one before it issued requests for proposals to possible health-care partners and another after it received the proposals, McRoy pointed out.
The county commissioners attended both public hearings, he recalled.
Asked for his take on this issue, Commissioner Hood Richardson said there are two schools of thought on whether the county board should conduct a public hearing on the future of BRHS.
One school dictates that if the commissioners “should suddenly start trying to follow hospital law, as is being advocated,” they might become entirely subject to those laws, which would hurt the public, he said.
Richardson is also a member of the hospital board.
“It’s very interesting to me that McRoy sat on the (hospital) board for, to my knowledge, 20 years and always gave glowing reports to the commissioners about what great shape the hospital was in and how well managed it was,” he said.
County Manager Paul Spruill said the county is relying on three attorneys — one for the county, one for BRHS and one for UHS — as it moves forward on the hospital process.
Spruill suggested the county preferred to err on the side of caution by scheduling a public hearing.
“The straight answer is there’s no case law on it, but at the end of the day, we’re not going to lose any time by holding a public hearing because all of the due diligence can proceed alongside the public hearing,” he commented.
The applicable statute, 131E-13 (d) shows a public hearing on the sale or lease of a hospital by a public body should be held by a hospital authority or a municipality, in this case the county.
Also in Thursday night’s Down East meeting, guest speaker Jack Piland spoke at length about the hospital issue. Piland, a former BRHS board member, is one of the organizers of a pro-UHS movement that culminated in a rally across from Beaufort County Medical Center.