I'd been looking forward to seeing what the Glen Rose Reporter put in about the meeting this week between the Hospital Authority and the Glen Rose Medical Foundation. If you haven't had a chance to look, RUN down to the store and get a copy of the December 23 2009 issue. Erin Cooper attended the meeting and wrote it up.

 Seems that the auditing report for the Foundation was, um, not so great.  There were *weaknesses* in the financials since.... 2006! (Let me stop right here to ask, were these auditing reports read? Was this explained to the Somervell County Commissioner's Court?)

These major weaknesses included *unacceptable and gross errors*-like errors in the bank accounts, payroll penalties in excess of $20,000 (would that be J Nichol's department?) and out of balance accounts by, wait for it, ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

And then, amazingly, the auditor apparently said he was representing the Foundation and didn't have to tell about why the accounts were in such disarray, SO MUCH DISARRAY that the books couldn't even have BEEN audited in previous years. And again, that he doesn't have to disclose information about what his *client* was doing. THANK GOODNESS we are getting all this PUBLIC instead of this *Oh, I don't have to tell you because this is private and my client doesn't want you to know".

Let's review for minute.

The County is on the hook for a 14.5 MILLION DOLLARS through the Certificate of Obligation that was come up with BECAUSE Gary Marks wanted to beef up the hospital. That's US, folks. Our tax valuation rate was upped to cover this. AT THAT POINT, apparently somebody at the Foundation decided to take that money (UPDATE: This is strictly talking about the money that GRMC was supposed to pay BACK to the county as part of the lease agreement, NOT the CO monies themselves which are safe in a county account) and instead of keeping it in separate accounts (because it is OUR money versus THEIR money), they put it all into the same accounts, and apparently dipped into that account to pay OPERATING expenses. (Remember that the lease the Foundation had was for operation, because Somervell County owns the bulidings, and equipment). Remember also that it was illegal for the county to loan money directly to a foundation so the CO was technically to themselves. Let's also remember how hard Mike Ford, who was STILL ON THE Roger Marks FOUNDATION when he was elected to office as commissioner and remained on that foundation,pushed to get those CO for GRMC. Walter Maynard, at the meeting the other day, said basically, that Marks had come to the commissioner's court and told them they could afford the payment and HAD HE KNOWN about this bad audit, they wouldn't have okayed that 14.5 million CO. (Go read the article, it will make your jaw drop).

Now, it seems to me, my opinion, that the Foundation wasn't running the hospital so well. They were losing money. They had serious flaws in their financials. In fact, that's one of the reasons why, AFTER the COs were okayed, Marks was pushing for Somervell County to pass a hospital district. He said in his presentation that the hospital was losing money. I wondered at the time and still continue to wonder, why would you put somebody in charge of operating something that may not be the most efficient or careful in doing so? The fact that the financials are in bad shape, that 1 million bucks is missing, not to mention the 750,000 payment for the CO that is due shortly leads me to that supposition. What did the newly formed Hospital Authority do? Put Marks and the 501a GR Healthcare Authority BACK in as contracted... without apparently doing any kind of looking around to see if they were who ought to be doing it. In face, three of the people on the newly formed Hospital Authority were Foundation members and resigned FROM the foundation shortly before the meeting the other day, I'm sure so that there would be no appearance of conflict of interest.

And what about the audits? Mike Ford asked the question the other day in commissioners court if 2 audits were necessary. At the time I thought he was probably attempting to be careful about monies spent, but at this point not only should a second audit be done AND NOT BY THE SAME AUDITING COMPANY THAT DID THE ONE FOR THE FOUNDATION, but it should also include the time frame from September 2009 to January 1 2010 (or whenever the Foundation settles all that *holdback* money) because who knows if maybe some other monies might accidentally get misplaced.

As a side note, I wondered yesterday why the new Hospital Authority is not the contact point for open records-THEY are the ones in charge, not Gary Marks, and yet they seem to want to defer to Gary Marks to handle the open records. Gary Marks, whose foundation comingled funds and can't account for a million bucks. I don't agree with that.  Maybe we need to get in some entity that is competent and legal.

In any event, something is rotten with all this, it involves a WHOLE lot of money and it looks like we the taxpayer will be the ones to suffer.