Legal Counsel<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\nPrior to the vote hiring the Kenyon Disend law firm Hemstad stated, “for a long time we’ve needed legal counsel that reports directly to the board of commissioners, not through other staff. That gives us independent counsel.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hemstad described Kenyon Disend as the “best municipal law firm in Washington state. They provide counsel to many different public institutions.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bowman questioned the reason for hiring an attorney to represent the board stating, “We have legal counsel \u2013 Mr. (David) Smith.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hemstad countered stating, “Yes and he reports through the CEO (Rich Roodman). There have been times when we’ve needed counsel looking after the interests of the public more than the administration. (Kenyon Disend) would not be part of the bonus program for instance, which potentially could influence the type of advice we get.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Parnell said she agreed with Bowman. “We have legal counsel. He’s cheap, his interests are not only of the hospital but the public and he has served us well. Any questions have been answered. As far as I’m concerned he is just fine. He’s here, he knows all about the hospital and how it runs.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Heide stated he was supporting the resolution. “I was threatened with a lawsuit if I were to continue speaking out about my beliefs for how this place should be run\u2026. I approached David Smith with the issue and he said, ‘Because of my bias I cannot discuss this with you,’ and he handed it off to a different attorney\u2026. I think we need independent counsel\u2026 based on this one example. He cannot represent us on an external lawsuit. We really truly need independent counsel.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bowman questioned how the firm would be paid, since it was not added to the 2012 budget.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Where are you going to get the money to pay for legal counsel?” Bowman asked.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hemstad said, “We are an elected body and we have statutory ability. We can easily amend out budget.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bowman stated, “Any extra money has to come from the approval of the alliance board\u2026. We can’t approve this tonight.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hemstad countered, “Of course we can approve this tonight. We are an elected body and we are not dictated to by any other group that is unelected.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bowman said during a phone interview Tuesday she did not know prior to the meeting about the resolution to hire Kenyon Disend as the legal counsel for the board.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She stated she supported the alliance between Valley and University of Washington Medicine.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I am hopeful we can all work together soon,” Bowman said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hemstad said when reached by phone Tuesday, “All the steps we took at the last meeting were to reestablish the authority of the elected board. We have statutory oversight and responsibility and we should not have abdicated that.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hemstad said the payment of the firm, which could be either hourly or by retainer, will be considered at the next meetings. The commissioner also stated changes to the bylaws will likely be presented at the next meetings.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Valley Medical Center Board of Commissioners met for the first time in 2012 on Jan. 16 and there were some clear changes and some things looked very similar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8643"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}