Hospital in crisis

County commissioners support tax increase after executive's raise

The County's biggest employer, Olympic Medical Center (OMC), lost $28 million last year and $7.9 million during the first four months of this year. However, the hospital gave its CEO a pay raise, and now the county commissioners want taxpayers to pick up the slack. Now it’s up to voters.

OMC, with a hospital in Port Angeles and a campus in Sequim, says it needs to collect more than double the amount from county residents on property taxes than it currently does. On Tuesday, the county commissioners passed a resolution supporting a levy that would do that.

Although the county commissioners are tasked with "putting the translated desires of residents into action," they are increasingly choosing business "favorites" upon which to bestow taxpayer-funded handouts.  A favored business leader, like hospital CEO Darryl Wolfe, was invited to have a conversation and present to the commissioners.  It was a lucrative arrangement because the commissioners (without resident input) rewarded him with a resolution that supports taxpayers bailing out the failing, mismanaged hospital. 

Meanwhile, unfavored businesses, like the Happy Valley Gravel Pit and the McKinley Paper Mill, are either intentionally sabotaged or left to fail.

Did job-creators and tax-generators Saar's Super Saver Foods, Sears, JCPenney, Office Depot, Allen Logging Co., Spencer Forest Products, Interfor (two locations in Beaver and Forks), Nippon, Vigor Alaska, Big Lots, Payless Shoes, Rite Aid, and a long list of restaurants that closed since the pandemic get a taxpayer-funded bailout or a nod from the commissioners? 

Several businesses have been allowed to fail in Clallam County over the past few years but they didn’t get resolutions passed in their support, and most of them weren’t even mentioned by our county leaders. Is it really the role of elected officials to endorse which businesses succeed?

Part of OMC's inability to quit bleeding out money lies with management. When an ER doctor was accused of sexually assaulting seven female OMC patients over 18 months, accusers said that management should have done more to protect the women since the physician had a history of sex crime accusations from a previous employer.

Internal criticism abounds as well.  Employees say their colleagues are leaving at a record rate, but routine exit interviews aren't being conducted to determine the cause of their departure. Nurses say they are being paid high wages to clean and mop rooms because there isn't enough custodial staff.  Others say equipment is scarce and that nurses must go floor to floor searching for IV poles when they could be tending to patients.  Some equipment is faulty and in disrepair, but management isn't listening.

This wall-mounted computer screen at OMC can no longer be adjusted for ergonomic viewing and is currently held in place with yogurt cups.

When the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society Director asked the commissioners for $125,000 of taxpayer funds, they willingly handed it over and congratulated her on a wonderful job. The director was given a $46,117 raise, and seven months after asking the commissioners for a handout, OPHS shuttered its canine operations and is selling the property. The director has retired.

Now, hospital CEO Darryl Wolfe is asking you, the Clallam County taxpayer, to double what you already pay to the hospital, and he has the commissioners' support.  Seven months ago, while the hospital was losing millions each month, Wolfe’s annual compensation was increased by over eight thousand dollars to $283,250. His $450 monthly car allowance remained the same.

There's more than the headwinds of inflation and a historically distressed local economy to challenge the hospital in coming years.  OMC doesn't turn anyone away. In other words, those without insurance are treated, and the bill is passed onto taxpayers.  Whether it's Commissioner Ozias and the Tribe pulling the plug on four family-wage jobs at a gravel pit next to Ozias' primary residence or the 193 families that will be cut off from private health insurance when the McKinley Paper Mill closes next month, those folks will still receive care.  Private insurance typically comes from employment, but in a county that is unfriendly to business, the unpayable bills will keep piling up, and taxpayers will pick up the tab.

Clallam County has as many square acres as it ever will — they aren't making more parcels to tax.  However, more and more taxable parcels are falling off the county's ledger and into Tribal trusts.  County leaders aren't objecting to the taxable land disappearing, and they don't have plans for Tribal trust lands to start contributing taxes.  As long as there is a pattern of fewer taxpayers paying for more residents to receive care, property taxpayers will increasingly be forced to bear that responsibility.  This is a consequence of the Tribes choosing to defund our schools, veteran programs, emergency services, and hospitals.

Voting to tax some of the residents may be the quickest way for OMC to increase its revenue stream, but it won't save the hospital — it only puts a Band-Aid on an arterial hemorrhage.  Medicare reimbursement rates must be adjusted at the federal level.  Rather than fixing the root problem, OMC has opted to get a payday loan and pawn some jewelry.  

The spending will continue, the taxpayers will incrementally shoulder more of the burden, and business leaders will continue getting raises while asking you to give them more of your money.