Legal wrangling over the composition of the eastern New Orleans hospital district board will continue until at least next week, as Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office and a group of residents suing the city agreed in court Thursday to push back a hearing about Landrieu's appointment authority. It was unclear Thursday evening whether the delay would affect Friday's scheduled purchase...
Legal wrangling over the composition of the eastern New Orleans hospital district board will continue until at least next week, as Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office and a group of residents suing the city agreed in court Thursday to push back a hearing about Landrieu's appointment authority.
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closing scheduled for Friday, a month after Landrieu announced that The city and Universal Health Services of Pennsylvania had agreed to a $16.25 million deal for the hospital; closing was scheduled for Friday.It was unclear Thursday evening whether the delay would affect Friday's scheduled purchase of the shuttered Methodist Hospital by the Orleans Parish Hospital District. The long-lingering redevelopment project, using a portion of the city's federal hurricane recovery grants, has been a Landrieu emphasis since he took office in May.
City Attorney Nanette Brown told Civil District Judge Sidney Cates IV that the parties had a closing scheduled for Friday, a month after Landrieu announced that the city and Universal Health Services of Pennsylvania had agreed to a $16.25 million deal.
Brown asked Cates whether he "would deem it" improper to close given that the judge delayed arguments. He replied, "I'm not giving you an advisory opinion on that."
The hearing was rescheduled for Wednesday.
The Landrieu administration had not disclosed its plans as of late Thursday evening. Efforts to reach a Universal Health Services representative were not successful.
In the meantime, the six plaintiffs who are trying to convince Cates that Landrieu unlawfully ousted them from the hospital district board are eager to defend themselves against the Landrieu administration's characterization that they are trying to delay the return of a hospital to eastern New Orleans. The hospital district -- Gentilly, the 9th Ward and all neighborhoods east of the Industrial Canal -- has gone without a hospital since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"I live in New Orleans east. I returned after the storm. I rebuilt my house," said Romona Baudy, one of eight hospital district board members that Landrieu replaced. Baudy also owns and operates a flower shop. "I've invested," she said. "My only agenda is to help the 77,000 people who have come back and don't have a hospital."
Baudy and her fellow plaintiffs said defending their motives is as important as their legal arguments.
Dr. Janet Barnes said, "Not a day goes by when one of my patients doesn't ask when Methodist is reopening."
Alice Craft-Kerney, who runs the Lower 9th Ward Health Clinic, said she hears the same thing from her patients.
Alicia Plummer, chairwoman of the board before Landrieu's contested appointments, turned the question of motive against the mayor. She noted that it was then-Sen. Ann Duplessis who, in the waning hours of the 2010 legislative session, engineered the legislative amendment that altered the hospital service district law to give Landrieu absolute appointment authority, with no set terms. Duplessis, who represented eastern New Orleans, had already announced that she would be joining the Landrieu administration after the session ended.
Plummer also decried what she called a whisper campaign suggesting that she and other board members were in line for kickbacks or windfalls from a deal with Universal Health Services.
The plaintiffs' case hinges in part on their argument that the changes could apply only to new appointees, but not be used to remove existing board members whose terms had not expired.
The city argues that the Legislature has the power to adjust the composition and terms of any boards it created previously. The city also asks Cates to toss the case on several procedural and technical grounds.
Landrieu inherited the hospital project from his predecessor, and he has consistently trashed Ray Nagin's effort, particularly a sales agreement that originally called for the hospital district to buy Methodist and two other shuttered UHS properties -- Lakeland Medical Pavilion and Lake Forest Surgery Center -- for a price not to exceed $40 million.
During his July state of the city address, Landrieu said he was "frustrated that it's been five years and no hospital, frustrated that the previous administration couldn't get a deal done." In the same address, he recognized new appointees to the board. And when he announced the deal to buy only Methodist, he mocked the idea of buying all three buildings.
Baudy and Plummer said the outgoing board members resent being lumped in with the Nagin administration. The board, they said, was always an independent entity, but depended on the city because it controlled the recovery grant money.
"We were never going to buy one piece of property for $40 million," Baudy said. "We're not stupid. And we're not 'Nagin people.' I know Mitch Landrieu better than I know Ray Nagin." They also said Landrieu and his aides never reached out to hear their arguments after the mayor's election.
Deputy Mayor Judy Reese Morse countered Thursday that "the attorney representing (the old board) served on the health care task force transition team." The transition team, she did, did not get a full report on the project it had requested.
Asked whether Landrieu considered reappointing any old members, Morse replied, "We chose those leaders who share the mayor's vision and commitment to deliver a full-service, sustainable hospital in New Orleans east as quickly as possible."
Bill Barrow can be reached at bbarrow@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3452.