Board spars over appointments
By Steve Herring
Published in News on January 4, 2017 9:57 AM
Jack Best, Dr. Samer Kasbari and Bob Jackson Tuesday morning were named to the Wayne Health Corp. board of directors in what continues to be a thorny appointment issue for Wayne County commissioners.
Wayne Health Corp. is the parent company of Wayne Memorial Hospital. Its board members also serve as the hospital board.
Commissioner Joe Gurley, chairman of the board's appointments committee, made a motion to reappoint Best, a former county commissioner, to the Wayne Health Corp. board and to make Kasbari a new appointee.
Commissioner John Bell offered an amendment to Gurley's motion to include Jackson, former chairman of the Wayne County Republican Party.
However, commission Chairman Bill Pate said he wanted to vote on each appointment separately and asked Gurley and Bell to withdraw their respective motions.
They did so, and Gurley made his motion for a second time to appoint Best.
Commissioner Joe Daughtery amended the motion to appoint Jackson instead.
"I have a question. I thought I just added him as the third person." Bell said. "I thought we had three."
"I had rather we vote on them individually," Pate said again.
"But I don't understand it," Bell said. "I already had Mr. Jackson into a spot as the third person."
Pate said he understood, but still wanted separate votes on each appointment.
"In the method that you are doing this instead of having the opportunity of having Mr. Jackson and Mr. Best on the board... either we vote to not have Mr. Jackson on the board or we vote to exclude Mr. Best from the board," Commissioner Ed Cromartie said. "I think the intention Mr. Bell speaks of you would have both on the board."
Cromartie also mentioned the previous hospital board vote in November that was tabled.
"I thought we needed to take that off the table before we went to anything else with this," he said.
County Attorney Borden Parker said the board would not have to take it off the table.
"It will remain tabled if you take other action today," he said.
Daughtery's amendment to appoint Jackson failed 5-2 with Pate and Daughtery voting yes.
Bell, Gurley, Cromartie and Commissioners Wayne Aycock and Ray Mayo voted no.
Gurley's motion to appoint Best was approved 5-2 with Pate and Daughtery voting no.
Daughtery cast the sole no vote in the 6-1 vote to appoint Kasbari.
Bell then restated his motion to appoint Jackson. It was unanimously approved.
The appointment issue first cropped up last November when Gurley made a motion to reappoint Best and Terry Jordan to the hospital board and make Kasbari a new appointee.
Jordan was not among the nominees this past Tuesday.
Gurley said the appointments committee had received a "ton" of applications following the November vote. He said Jordan was a knowledgeable and good board member.
However, because of the slew of applications and following a lot of discussion and in an attempt to appease everyone the committee had come up with the three names it thought would be suitable to take before commissioners.
But even then it was still not unanimous, he said.
During the first vote in November, Daughtery amended Gurley's motion to table the vote.
The amended motion was approved 4-3 with Daughtery, Bell, Pate and Cromartie voting yes.
Gurley, Aycock and Mayo voted no.
During that meeting Daughtery said tabling the appointment was a way to keep people off the board who have created a contentious relationship with commissioners.
He did not name anyone specifically.
Daughtery also used the November vote to take his fellow commissioners to task saying they are putting the concerns of the boards they serve on ahead of those of the commission.
Gurley, who represents the commission on the hospital board, disagreed with Daughtery's assertions that the hospital board has been contentious in its relationship with commissioners.
Gurley, Aycock and Mayo also disagreed with Daughtery that their loyalty is just to the commission. It is to the taxpayers, they said.