Fresh Loaf

Here’s the short form of the Grady Memorial Hospital story: It’s a public hospital whose financial problems have long been ignored by the leaders in the city and the state. It’s also like a buffalo being attacked by wolves — all of the predators want to get a good bite off of the wounded beast.

One of the problems has been leadership — the current politically appointed board isn’t ideal, but it also isn’t the primary reason for Grady’s woes. So, a group of wealthy, mostly white power-hitters — the Metro Atlanta Chamber — proposes solving the problems by shifting control to a private nonprofit corporation. The state’s laws and cases involving such entities are somewhat murky. It’s likely the current Grady board, a public entity, would stay around as a toothless landlord, and the new nonprofit would submit documents to the board, which would be subject to open-records laws. It’s likely, but not completely certain, the nonprofit would be at least partially transparent. Additional joint ventures and subsidiary companies probably would exist outside the sunshine of public inspection.

Considering that this is Atlanta, that scenario should be worrisome.

Now we come to the public forum that wasn’t. WSB-TV Channel 2 — the television arm of the media Coxopoly — hosted a “town hall” meeting on Grady Thursday night (Sept. 13). But as reporters for the upstart Atlanta Progressive News found out, Cox had a peculiar view of who lives in its town.

The event was invitation-only. Community activists had every reason to suspect that only certain opinions would be aired. “It’s a town hall meeting, but the town isn’t invited!” Terence Courtney, director of Atlanta Jobs with Justice, told the media activists with APN. “They’re running from us. We want a [true] public process.”

No surprises there. The Chamber deserves a lot of credit for developing a plan after the community’s and state’s political leadership failed for decades to remedy the hospital’s problems. But the Chamber’s Grady committee had no poor people, no rank-and-file hospital employees — none of the people who direly need to see Grady saved. The Grady activists have a point when they argue that, at best, the Chamber’s approach to the hospital is paternalistic.

Cox is even less likely than the Chamber to mingle with the masses. And those masses — well, about 50 people — demonstrated in front of WSB, voicing their displeasure at being excluded from the discussion.

Meanwhile, Grady lingers on life support. And what could pull the plug is the lack of real public input — something neither the Chamber nor Cox seem much interested in.

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