Depleted health board chooses new chairman

The Broward Health board picked one of its unindicted members Wednesday to be its new chairman, selecting Andrew Klein to replace former Chairman Rocky Rodriguez, who was indicted in December and resigned in March.

Rodriguez is one of five Broward Health leaders indicted by a grand jury in December for violating the state’s open-meetings laws when the a previous interim chief executive was fired.

The board is supposed to have seven members but is currently operating with only four members.

Klein, the second-most recent appointment to the board by Gov. Rick Scott, was nominated at the March board meeting for the chairman position along with Commissioner Christopher Ure, who was indicted at the same time as Rodriguez.

Commissioner Steven Wellins renominated Klein on Wednesday, saying the chairman should be “completely free of any conflicts” and “without a cloud of scrutiny.”

"Optics matter. Perceptions matter," Wellins said.

Ure withdrew his name from consideration, saying he did not think he had the time to take on the extra duties of being chairman. The vote was 4-0 for Klein, an attorney who lives in Parkland. Broward Health operates five hospitals and other facilities serving the northern two-thirds of the county. It is partially supported by property taxes.

The others under indictment are Chief Executive Officer Beverly Capasso, General Counsel Lynn Barrett and former board member Linda Robison.

The accusations involved the firing of interim CEO Pauline Grant in 2016.

The indictment said board members met individually with lawyers hired by the district to investigate Grant and communicated through intermediaries to skirt the state’s open-meetings law.