Memorial panel pick says no thanks
The newly appointed Citizens Commission on Ownership and Governance of Memorial Health System faces even more uncertainty after a month in which it has lost three members, including the weekend resignation of retired physician John Burrington.
Attorney Murray Weiner, who had been named an alternate on the 11-member panel, said this morning he’s not interested in replacing Burrington.
The commission, which attracted 60 applicants, is responsible for leading a community conversations about health care and the future of Memorial, including a possible sale of the city-owned enterprise.
“They haven’t asked me again, but the answer is I already told them I wasn’t interested in being an alternate,” Weiner said. “You either pick me or don’t pick me. I’m not second place.”
Commission Chairman Stephen Hyde said the panel “should be able to function pretty well” with 10 members, but that he will leave it up to the City Council to decide.
“On the one hand, it’s always difficult for somebody to get up to speed once you’ve got things rolling,” he said. “On the other, the City Council apparently wanted 11 members, and now we’re down to 10.”
Weiner said that after getting a voicemail message from Mayor Lionel Rivera last month that he had been picked as an alternate, he immediately called the mayor and the mayor’s assistant and left messages letting them know he wouldn’t serve as an alternate.
“Nobody asked me if I wanted to be an alternate,” he said. “When they told me that I’d been selected, I called back within an hour and said I wasn’t interested in being an alternate. In fact, on the mayor’s message, I said, ‘If I’m going to be devote my time to this, I’m going to be totally involved or not.’”
Rivera did not immediately return a call for comment.
Weiner, a commercial trial attorney and board president of The Resource Exchange, a charity for people with developmental disabilities, said he has “a thousand things going on.”
“If you want me to be involved in this thing, I’ll dive in. But I’m not sort of going to put my toe in,” he said.
So far, the commission has had a rocky start.
Burrington, who once worked at Memorial, resigned over the weekend because of a "family medical problem." Before that, commercial real estate broker and mayoral candidate Tim Leigh and B.J. Scott, president and CEO of Peak Vista Community Health Centers, resigned over conflict-of-interest concerns.
