On Background:

Vincent Fort Among The Few Who Knew What He Was Doing At Raucous Grady Meeting

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(12/3/07) It’s tempting to wonder if state Sen. Vincent Fort might not have been one of the few participants at the raucous meeting of the Grady board last week who knew precisely what he was doing.

If you watched the TV coverage, you may only remember seeing him scuffling with security guards in an attempt to gain access to the small meeting room the board initially intended to use - a facility obviously too small for the restless crowd gathered in a hospital corridor. Moments after that, the board decided to shift venues to a nearby auditorium.

Or maybe you saw clips of Fort taken after the meeting was moved, in which he bullied the trustees into listening to repetitious and largely hostile public comment for well over an hour.

It may not have been pretty or elegant, but a savvy politician and political science professor like Fort knows that in the district he represents, it’s often a virtue to be known as someone who isn’t afraid of a little civil disobedience every now and then.

Whether the board knew what it was doing with the resolution it finally adopted may be another matter.

You’ll remember that there’s been strong pressure on the trustees from the Atlanta business community and top political figures at the statehouse to place day-to-day control of the hospital in a nonprofit agency to begin straightening out the financial wreck that is Grady. The business community promised $300 million in aid if the trustees would take that step.

They did, and then again they didn’t. The resolution they adopted had the kind of strings that include the phrase, “as a condition precedent to ...”

One of those conditions was for the governor, lieutenant governor and Speaker of the House each to sign a statement declaring their intent to support additional direct financial assistance from the state of not less than $30 million a year, along with necessary budget measures to implement and fund a statewide trauma network to provide additional support and a commitment to further support medical education in the state by at least $30 million.

Other conditions were imposed on members of the business community and on Grady’s key partner, Emory, whose medical school provides most of the Grady docs.

Anyone who’s spent any time under the Gold Dome knows that an authority like Grady’s is in no position to try to impose conditions on the state. But since the board is chaired by a state legislator - Rep. Pam Stephenson - there was cause to wonder briefly on Monday night if some kind of behind-the-scenes, face-saving agreement had been worked out just before the proposed conditions were announced.

But the answer to that is no. The governor, the lieutenant governor and the Speaker all learned about the terms when the public did. And their response was predictable to anyone who’s spent any time under the Gold Dome.

Perdue’s comment was succinct: "I have no intention of signing an unenforceable document that seeks to bind the state to a specific, annual appropriation.”

“I don’t think they anticipated the strong reaction they got from the state,” one close observer told us at week’s end. He speculated that the resolution’s drafters tossed in the conditions in order to win over board holdouts and, thus, to guarantee its unanimous passage.

Another said, “I think they were afraid of Vincent Fort and that crowd, so they didn’t want to let anybody think they were giving away the store. But I don’t think they knew what they were going to do until right before the meeting. It was amateur hour.”

So what happens now? No doubt there will be further efforts to straighten out this mess, with the business community playing a key role. But some fear it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Meanwhile, legislation is being prepared to force the change on Grady, regardless of any steps taken by the politically-appointed board.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle put it this way last week: “I think it’s very likely the Legislature will take action in the event Grady does not act.”