On a cool, foggy morning that throbbed with symbolism in South Central, Mark Ridley-Thomas began to deliver on his main campaign promise barely 19 hours after being sworn in as a member of the County Board of Supervisors.
The only politician in Los Angeles who uses unassailable grammar even in his sleep — most colleagues would not recognize his “these are they” formulation — wasted no time mounting the stage.
After a long hibernation, the often ignored Watts-Willowbrook community was returning to the headlines as the Supervisor sought to unscramble the most perplexing institutional puzzle confronting the black community and healthcare officials throughout Los Angeles.
Standing in front of the mostly shut down King Harbor Hospital, before more television cameras than he ever saw during three recently completed terms in the state Legislature, Mr. Ridley-Thomas made his first official pronouncement that was intended to be daunting.
Seismic retro-fitting will be his first step toward entirely re-opening a slimmed-down version of the scarred and scandalized queen hospital of the black community — perhaps within two years. If the present facility is not up to it, the Supervisor said, then a new facility will have to be built.
Without as much as a nod from the County’s chief governing body, the Board of Supervisors, critics assert, the 35-year-old hospital known traditionally as the Martin Luther King Medical Center foundered and fell ignominiously onto its corrupt belly last year.
It failed and fell with a thud beneath the weight of both disgraceful and in some cases criminal behavior by medical personnel that critics say turned it into a hospital to be assiduously avoided.
Now, only the clinic remains open for business.
“I see no reason for delay,” Mr. Ridley-Thomas said as he laid out his plan with a sense of urgency. “The longer we delay, the more patients will be denied.
No Time to Dawdle
“This is a very complex set of issues that we must engage in order to reopen the medical center. We are taking this step because it is one of the understated issues that has to be addressed to move the agenda forward.”
Pressed as to why he didn’t start his return-to-respectability campaign in a more traditional area, namely with medical personnel, Mr. Ridley-Thomas said that safety should always come first.
“I will go to (my first) Board meeting this morning,” he said, “and introduce a motion that essentially communicates, in both symbolic and substantive terms, our full intention to cause this medical complex to be re-opened to service the needs of the constituents of the Watts-Willowbrook community, to be part of the health safety net in the County of Los Angeles, which all of us know is fragile.”
Rolled Into One Package
Therefore, in a single move, Mr. Ridley-Thomas covered both of his announced top two priorities, re-starting King Harbor and upgrading the healthcare potential of the 2.5 million residents of his district.
With his-retired (and seldom-seen) predecessor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke out of power, Mr. Ridley-Thomas introduced what he regarded as a new era of direct engagement.
“The work on the reopening of the Martin Luther King Medical Center will be defined by a higher degree of leadership, accountability, transparency,” he said in an unmistakable comparison with the nearly iconic Ms. Brathwaite Burke. “Within the first quarter of the new year, we will reconvene at this facility to have a full sense of the progress that will have been made.
“This morning I am here to announce my intention to present to the Board of Supervisors a motion to instruct the County’s CEO, the Dept. of Public Works, the Dept. of Health Services to develop a plan to meet the seismic standards necessary to provide, on an initial basis, a 120-bed licensed, in-patient hospital.
“The motion will call for cost estimates and a schedule to conform (to) the existing MLK Medical Center or to construct, as the case may be, new facilities that will meet earthquake safety standards required under existing law…and to report back to the Board within the next 60 days.”
Twin Purposes
Mr. Ridley-Thomas said his move has two objectives:
“First, to efficiently build out an existing wing of the hospital that meets seismic safety standards to accomplish the goal of the initial 120 beds, and secondly to effectively jump-start the efforts to re-open this medical center by addressing the fundamental questions of meeting seismic retro-fitting requirements.”
And then the Supervisor honed in on a point that critics may dispute, order of priorities.
“Safety first,” he said. “Patient care first. We cannot talk about having a hospital that does not comply with the necessary rules, regulations and laws that inform what it means to have a first-rate 21st century facility.”
