CITY FILES REQUEST TO VOID SITE BID BY HOSPITAL DISTRICT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - City officials are asking a judge to scrap the Antelope Valley Hospital District's bid to acquire the site where a rival project is being built, stating that the hospital board violated the state's open-meeting law.

City officials have filed a request in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking an order declaring the district's bid for the 30-acre site null and void. The city also wants a judge to order the hospital board to hold future discussions on the site during regularly scheduled open meetings.

``They have a duty to advise the public about what they are doing and they haven't done it,'' said Noel Doran, deputy city attorney for the city.

Hospital officials denied the city's allegations, stating that the board and administrators worked with legal counsel throughout the process to ensure no laws were violated.

``It's totally bogus,'' hospital CEO Les Wong said of the city's court filing. ``We feel comfortable we haven't violated anything.''

In the court filing for a writ of mandate, the city alleges that the hospital board violated California's Ralph M. Brown Act by discussing the site acquisition in a closed session when that issue was not listed on the agenda. The agenda did not identify the site, the property negotiators, or with whom officials were negotiating, according to the court filing.

The city also alleges hospital officials discussed the use of eminent domain to acquire the land before making an offer to purchase the property.

The filing asks the court to declare the board's authorization to pursue acquisition null and void; to declare the board's decision to exercise eminent domain powers null and void; to order the district board to conduct its business with regard to the site during its regular meetings and in the open, except when special meetings are necessary in light of all the circumstances; and to order the board to tape-record its closed sessions and preserve the tape recordings for a period to be determined by the court.

The legal battle centers on what city officials view as an attempt by the hospital district to block Universal Health Services from building an $82 million hospital complex at 38400 Tierra Subida.

The hospital district made a bid June 1, the day before Universal and city officials held a groundbreaking ceremony for the hospital complex, offering to buy the site for $9.3 million.

``Price is not the issue,'' City Attorney Matt Ditzhazy wrote in a July 1 letter to Wong. ``Rather, the issue is the propriety of AVHD's interference with the on-going development of the Tierra Subida site that will provide the Antelope Valley with 175 acute care hospital beds and 60-80 units of affordable senior housing within months, rather than the years it would take AVHD to get on track with a similar development, if it is even able to do so at all.''

Hospital district officials have said they fear that a new private hospital will draw off patients with insurance, leaving Antelope Valley Hospital caring for a higher percentage of patients unable to pay for their treatment.

Antelope Valley Hospital officials said they tried for a year to work out a partnership arrangement with Universal Health Services for the new hospital, but those talks failed.

Wong, in a July 15 letter to the city, said UHS was ``unwilling to bear the cost of providing a full-range of health care services to all the members of our community - a charge they consider a burden and we consider a fundamental mandate.''