Matt Ready

On February 4, 2015 the Jefferson Healthcare board of commissioners voted on a resolution to allow a company to drill for oil on a property whose mineral rights are owned by the hospital in North Dakota.  The vote passed 4-0 with myself abstaining from the final vote.  I abstained on the final vote because when the vote was called I was still uncertain about the decision.  I recognize both some positive and negative aspects of this action and I would have liked more time and information before voting.  In retrospect, I wish I had urged the board to create more opportunity for public comment and discourse on this decision before it came to a vote as I think that would have been greatly beneficial to the process.

At the January 7, 2015 Jefferson Healthcare Commission meeting, the board of commissioners debated a resolution during executive session that enacted a 3.25% raise for the CEO salary.  After the executive session concluded, the board returned to an open meeting and voted on the resolution.  I voted no while all other commissioners voted yes.

The reason I voted no on this resolution, and which I attempted to express during the executive session to my fellow commissioners, is as follows:

The US Healthcare system is deeply dysfunctional when it comes to money.  In our current system, costs and payments are utterly unbalanced, unfair, and irrational.  Some services cost too much, some cost too little, and some cost the right amount.  Likewise, some people in the US get amazing healthcare at a very reasonable and low personal cost while others cannot get desperately needed healthcare without bankrupting themselves (and some simply cannot get it at all).  This irrational unbalanced mayhem is also at play in the world of healthcare salaries.  Some people working in healthcare are paid far too little, others are paid just right, and others are paid far too much.  My over all opinion is that costs, payments, and salaries should all be set at reasonable rational levels so that we can have a world class sustainable competitive healthcare system that serves the needs of all people.

As for this vote, I believe hospital CEO salaries, including public hospital district salaries and including the salary of our public hospital district CEO, are too high.  Our hospital district CEO Mike Glenn is a talented administrator and my opinion about CEO salaries is not expressed here in order to disparage his abilities or competence.  Nonetheless, I believe his salary is too high, so I will not support any resolution to increase it further without a very good reason.

During my first year in office, I did not feel the Jefferson Healthcare Commission maintained an adequate process for measuring and evaluating the CEO performance.  Therefore, without a reasonable way to measure performance, I did not believe a performance based raise was appropriate.  I also do not see an adequate argument to approve this raise as a “cost of living” increase.  My fellow commissioners and I have recently approved a greatly revised governing process which hopefully will make the annual CEO evaluation process more rational and clear for upcoming years, though there remains much work to do.