The meeting was held at the Family Life Center at Gordon Memorial United Methodist Church. The stated purpose of the meeting was to ‘answer questions from employees and concerned citizens about the hospital board’s recent decision to sever the...the management agreement with Palmetto Health.’
Shortly after the meeting of the board of trustees was called to order, board member Robert W. Davis voted to amend the agenda to include an executive session “to discuss a contractual and/or personnel matter”.
If an executive session was going to be called, then hospital attorney Ernest Nauful would also go into executive session with the board to provide legal advice.
When asked for a more specific description of the personnel matter, as provided for in the Freedom of Information Act, board member Robert W. Davis, who made the motion, said he had no specific personnel issue in mind when he made a motion for the board to go into executive session.
Davis said he phrased the motion “contractual and/or legal” and if a personnel issue came up in the course of discussing the contractual matter, that’s when the board would discuss the personnel issue.
He confirmed the “contractual” portion of the executive session would deal with the contract with Palmetto Health.
Once the board had returned to open session, board chairman Jim Futrell reported the board had been in executive session to discuss “a personnel matter and to receive legal advice from our attorney.”
Futrell was asked after the meeting to provide a more specific description of the area or department the personnel matter concerned. In responding to that question, FMH attorney Ernest Nauful said, “put the request in writing and we’ll address it.”
Nauful said the vote to extend the contract did not mean the board was going to look at the situation and decide what to do by July 1, nor did it mean they were simply continuing the current contract, “it only means the contact was extended until July 1st.”
Addressing the concerned citizens and others who were there to speak on the severing of the contract, Futrell said after the vote to extend the contract was passed, “in light of the discussion we had in executive session and the action that’s just been taken, we find it really not necessary to go through the process that we had planned further, in light of us extending the contract until July 1st.”
Since there was no exception to this by the board members, the meeting was adjourned.
Asked how the board would deal with the issues that had been raised by the public, Futrell said, “we did not have a chance to discuss that, other than the fact that we’re extending the contract to July 1, that it wasn’t appropriate to bring up those questions.”
He said at that time, if the issues the public had brought up were still questions that needed to be answered, “that’s something the board as a body will have to decide.”
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