Former Colorado Springs City Councilman Sean Paige says the City Council‘s recent decision to explore other options for Memorial Health System is a step in the right direction.
But the process “remains a mess,” Paige wrote today in his Page by Paige blog.
“How honest is an RFP process that is only considering lease proposals, but not possible acquisitions? How can the public intelligently weigh the pros and cons of all the options unless all the options are presented?” Paige asks.
“How will Dr. (Larry) McEvoy‘s risky game of chicken with PERA over pension liabilities impact the process? Will potential partners be deterred when the PERA liability is unsettled and a potential lawsuit looms?”
Paige says the participation of Mayor Steve Bach and other businessmen in the Memorial task force is “the only hope we have” that the process will be conducted fairly.
But Paige is still leery of the outcome.
“City Council dominance over this phase of the process guarantees not just that it will be another mess, but that it will be designed to favor one plan,” he wrote.
“We’ve all heard about something called bid-rigging. The parameters of the process can be tailored to favor one outcome. And here we have an example of attempted bid-rigging in action.”
Go away your 15 minutes is up