Indy Digest: Oct. 17, 2024
The Coachella Valley has a LOT of government in it. Some people (myself included) would say it’s got too much government.
Nine cities. Three school districts. Multiple water boards. A health care district. Various tribes. State and county offices. It’s a LOT for a valley of about 420,000 full-time residents.
All of these government bodies, of course, have elections, and most of them are having them this year—and it’s just too much for us to cover. We have two more Candidate Q&A interviews coming, and that will pretty much be it for our pre-election coverage. We’re completely missing some valley cities’ municipal elections this year, and I am very sorry about that. But we can only do so much.
To fill the gap just a little, I’ll use some of these Indy Digest intros between now and Election Day to offer a bit of information on some election questions of note. Today, we’ll start with Measure AA, upon which voters within the Desert Healthcare District (DHCD) will decide.
As stated on the DHCD website: “The measure asks registered voters to consider a proposal for the Desert Healthcare District & Foundation to lease Desert Regional Medical Center to Tenet Healthcare for 30 years starting in 2027—with ownership of the Palm Springs hospital transferring to Tenet at the end of the lease in 2057.”
If you’re unsure on how to vote, this DHCD fact sheet is a good place to start. It explains the specifics on what, exactly, the measure would do if passed.
The list of organizations that support AA is extensive; you can find that on the supporters’ website, yesonmeasureaa.com. The case for passage, per that site: “Measure AA renews the Desert Regional Medical Center lease, ensuring lifesaving care at Desert Regional is not disrupted and provides nearly $650 million in lease payments from the hospital operator—not the taxpayers—to the local government to continue programs expanding access to healthcare. YES on AA guarantees continued professional operation and upkeep of the hospital—at no cost to taxpayers.”
On the other hand, there is one rather important group of people who are opposed to AA: The nurses’ union at Desert Regional Medical Center. Their case:
“Measure AA is not an ‘investment’ in Desert Regional, as its supporters say, but a shakedown that would let Tenet transfer or sell the hospital for a huge profit to someone else after 10 years,” said Deborah Edwards, RN in the neonatal intensive care unit at DRMC. “We nurses want the Coachella Valley community to know that Desert Healthcare District does not need to sell the hospital to make money. The district can keep leasing the hospital without increasing taxes to residents.
“Tenet’s priority is profits, not patient care. We are chronically short-staffed, which saves Tenet money, but jeopardizes patient care,” Edwards added. “Also, Tenet has completely failed to maintain the building. We have a recurring problem with the elevators not working, sewage has leaked into patient rooms, rodents are in the intensive care unit, and we’ve had cockroaches in the emergency room’s break room. This is why we should not relinquish public control of our hospital to Tenet. They don’t deserve it.”
DRMC is in no danger of closing. Tenet is unlikely to abandon the facility, its most profitable hospital in California in 2023, with more than $500 million in profits from 2018-2023. Contrary to what supporters of Measure AA say, the ballot measure will not save taxpayers money. Instead, Measure AA would allow the sale of Coachella Valley’s most important publicly owned healthcare asset and end local input on the hospital’s future.
Les Zendle, a DHCD board member who did not run for re-election this year, is in favor of AA. He explained why on his publicly accessible Facebook page:
In my opinion, there is no good alternative to supporting Measure AA. If it is NOT approved, property tax payers in the entire Coachella Valley will need to pay $220 million (to meet the hospital’s seismic retrofit compliance by 2030) and Tenet won’t give the Healthcare District $650 million (in lease/purchase payments over 30 years) for it to use for grants to non-profits to improve access to medical and behavioral heath services—especially for medically underserved residents. There’s also $70 million guaranteed by Tenet in the lease/purchase agreement to improve the ER at JFK. I wish a non-profit (like Kaiser or UCR or even Loma Linda) would have been interested in leasing the hospital, but they were not—especially at fair market value ($650 million + paying for the seismic retrofit due in 2030).
There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the “non-compete” clause in the lease/purchase agreement. Just to be clear, the “do not compete” clause does not stop any entity from competing with Tenet. It only stops the Desert Healthcare District from using its public money to fund competition from another acute care hospital currently operating in the Coachella Valley (i.e, Eisenhower) for the 30 years of the lease. Eisenhower is free to compete, but not with District money. This is a long-accepted and normal arrangement when a hospital operator leases a hospital building from another entity—since such funding would undermine the fair market value being paid by the hospital operator.
Failure to pass Measure AA would be extremely disruptive to hospital care in the Coachella Valley—negatively affecting patients, physicians, nurses and other hospital workers.
The big question here seems to be this: What would Tenet do if voters reject AA? The nurses’ union seems to think Tenet would stick around because of all the profits to be made. Zendle doesn’t seem so sure of that—and if the nurses are wrong, it would definitely cause some problems. But they’re correct when they say Tenet insisted on taking ownership of what is a taxpayer-owned resource (the hospital) as part of the new lease deal.
We’ll know more when voters decide on AA come Election Day.
—Jimmy Boegle
Last Chance to Vote!
Voting ends Sunday!
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More News
• 911 service has again been down in much of the Coachella Valley throughout the day. KESQ News Channel 3 has a list of what various area cities and law enforcement offices are saying. A snippet: “In Palm Springs, the city released a statement, ‘Attention: Our 911 system is currently encountering problems. Callers may either receive a busy signal or reach another police jurisdiction. We are actively working with our service provider to restore it, though the exact timeline is currently unknown. Our dispatch center should be able to identify callers and return their calls.’ … Palm Springs Police added to the statement, saying it could be related to another theft out in Bloomington. The last outage was related to the same thing.”
• Here’s an absolutely horrifying headline from Wired: “DHS Warns Law Enforcement Election Deniers May Attempt to Bomb Drop Boxes.” The story says: “United States intelligence officials have been quietly issuing warnings to government agencies all summer about a rising threat of extremist violence tied to the 2024 presidential election, including plots to destroy bins full of paper ballots and promote ‘lone wolf’ attacks against election facilities throughout the country. In a series of reports between July and September, analysts at the Department of Homeland Security warned of a ‘heightened risk’ of extremists carrying out attacks in response to the race. Copies of the reports, first reported by WIRED, describe efforts by violent groups to provoke attacks against election infrastructure and spread calls for the assassinations of lawmakers and law enforcement agents. Last month, the agency’s intelligence office emphasized in a report that ‘perceptions of voter fraud’ had risen to become a primary ‘trigger’ for the ‘mobilization to violence.’ This is particularly true, the report says, among groups working to leverage the ‘concept of a potential civil war.’ Fears about ‘crimes by migrants or minorities’ are among other top ‘triggers,’ it says.”
• Physical retail outlets continue to struggle. First up: Walgreens just announced it will soon be closing a LOT of stores. NPR says: “Walgreens plans to close 1,200 stores over the next three years, the pharmacy chain said on Tuesday. It’s part of the company’s plan for a turnaround, as it faces retail competition and lower prescription payouts. Chief Executive Tim Wentworth said about a quarter of the company’s stores are unprofitable. Walgreens has been on a $1-billion cost-cutting spree. It’s already been shutting some stores, shaking up leadership and renegotiating its deals with insurers. Walgreens, which also owns the British drugstore chain Boots, reported a net loss of $3 billion in the latest quarter. This was actually better than expected, with sales growing 6%. … The convenience-store part of pharmacy chains has been losing shoppers to Amazon, Walmart, Costco, grocery stores and dollar stores. Many of those rivals also fill prescriptions, competing for pharmacy customers, too.”
• Also closing lots of stores: Big Lots. CBS News says: “Big Lots is adding dozens of locations to its list of stores slated to close as part of the discount retailer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. The Columbus, Ohio-based company plans to shut down another 56 locations in 27 states, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. The development comes a week after Big Lots listed 46 stores facing closure in 23 states, with each of those locations currently running closing sales, according to Big Lots’ online store locator. Big Lots last month filed for bankruptcy protection from its debts, saying it intended to sell what remained of its business to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management. Big Lots in August announced plans to close up to 315 stores. There are 1,145 Big Lot locations in the United States, according to the company’s website.”
• That BrucePac meat recall due to listeria, mentioned in the last two Indy Digests, continues to grow—and get more complicated. Ars Technica reports: “As of October 15, meat supplier BrucePac, of Durant, Oklahoma, is recalling 11.8 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat and poultry products after routine federal safety testing found Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially deadly bacterium, in samples of the company’s poultry. The finding triggered an immediate recall, which was first issued on October 9. But, officials are still working to understand the extent of the contamination—and struggling to identify the hundreds of potentially contaminated products. ‘Because we sell to other companies who resell, repackage, or use our products as ingredients in other foods, we do not have a list of retail products that contain our recalled items,’ BrucePac said in a statement updated October 15. … For now, consumers’ best chance of determining whether they’ve purchased any of the affected products is to look through a 342-page list of products identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture so far. … In the latest update, the USDA noted that some of the recalled products were also distributed to schools, but the agency hasn’t identified the schools that received the products. Restaurants and other institutions also received the products.”
• And finally … here’s one more bit of recall news that is, I hate to say it, kind of funny. The Hill says: “Coca-Cola has recalled thousands of cans of Minute Maid Zero Sugar Lemonade that were improperly labeled and actually contained the regular formula of lemonade with 40 grams of sugar, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The recall, which Coca-Cola issued in September but didn’t announce publicly, applied to 13,152 cases, each with 12 cartons of 12 cans of 12 ounces of lemonade. … The FDA classified the recall as Class II, which ‘involves a health hazard situation where there is a remote probability of adverse health consequences from use of the product.’”
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