• Community Hospital's ER will close on June 25. The hospital will close on July 3. A multi-month lapse will likely occur before the new operator provides an ER and a shrunken, reconfigured version of the former Community hospital with barely 40 beds instead of over 150.

• The Mayor/Council authorized deal now being negotiated appears to envision providing taxpayer money or resources to suit Molina, Wu, Network, LLC. LB taxpayers appear to be among the last to know the likely extent and terms for this. Economic Development Director John Keisler stated at the June 19 Council meeting -- and LBREPORT.com reported at the time although others didn't -- that the Council-authorized "Exclusive Negotiating Agreement" will "explore" some type of "public participation" for seismic improvements for some of hospital buildings. "Public participation" is a common government euphemism for using taxpayer money/subsidies/resources to enable an officially favored private for-profit entity to make a larger profit than it might otherwise make.

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• The Mayor/Council deal effectively gives the Molina-Wu-Network, LLC" considerable leverage in its current negotiations with the City.. Publicly portrayed as saviors instead of the shrewd businesspeople they surely are, Molina-Wu-Network, LLC is now effectively in the driver's seat, having seen the Mayor and Council afraid even to mention -- much less discuss in adult terms -- ways to limit, reduce and cap taxpayer exposure in the coming deal. And once Molina-Wu-Network re-opens the hospital even on an "interim basis," it will be even harder for the Mayor/Council to say "no" to what the LLC wants.
• The recent urgency over "keeping the hospital open" was driven in large part by efforts to reduce costs for the new for-profit operator. City staffer Keisler publicly estimated that those costs could range from $10 million to $30 million. It's understandable that the new operator would want to avoid that...but if putting the former operator's license in "suspense" doesn't suffice, will LB taxpayers be asked to pay or finance part of the cost of obtaining the new operator's license?

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LBREPORT.com dislikes taxpayer-funded corporate welfare. We've said it in retail contexts (former Marina/Pacific "Lohmann's" deal) and in developer contexts (hotel room tax-giveaway at Pine/Ocean/former Jergin's Trust site.) And now we see it coming -- in an amount and on terms LB's Mayor/Council have shown themselves afraid to discuss publicly -- basically to benefit a for-profit hospital operator.

Yes, a hospital's services are different than a retailer or a hotel developer, but it's infantile to pretend that a for-profit hospital operator is doing LB taxpayers a favor by offering to operate a shrunken (read: less costly) hospital, paying "rent" of a dollar a year for the next roughly forty years and using buildings it may want the public to pay to meet state standards.

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We don't blame Molina-Wu-Network, LLC for seeking this; they're doing what we'd expect from a for-profit entity. We do fault the Mayor/Council for failing to act like adults. It's childish to treat the for-profit LLC's well-heeled principals as if they're civic saviors when they're basically bottom-line hospital businesspeople. Bottom-line businesspeople are fine with us, but in our view, Councilmembers should have, and still should, make make clear publicly that they won't rubberstamp "public participation" that amounts to extravagant corporate welfare for the Moilina-Wu-Network LLC.

Long Beach residents and businesses no longer have nearly 200 police officers and three fire engines that their City previously provided, despite a double-digit multi-million dollar annual cash infusion from "blank check" Measure A and now millions more annually continuing from "blank check" Measure M. Making those "blank checks" payable to the Molina-Wu-Network LLC won't restore the police and firefighter services LB taxpayers need and deserve.

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