Crisis at district deepens

Broward Health unable to find auditing firm

The sense of crisis at Broward Health deepened Friday, as the organization’s board struggled to find an accounting firm to perform its annual audit and heard its internal auditor say she planned to resign due to a “toxic” and “retaliatory” environment.

The board, five volunteers appointed by Gov. Rick Scott, had dismissed the previous auditor, the international firm KPMG, after the firm refused to agree to extensive restrictions on the scope of its work. The board had also sought assurances that the audit would not be delayed by pending state and federal investigations.

Broward Health then sought other audit firms to do the job, but none responded favorably. With time running short and the organization’s bond rating and financial standing at stake, the board voted Friday to broaden its search beyond the large international accounting firms it had initially approached.

The public hospital district faces a federal investigation into purchasing, a state inspector general investigation of contracts awarded over the past several years and continued federal oversight after agreeing to pay nearly $70 million to settle federal charges of excessive and improper payments to doctors.

Board members Christopher Ure, Linda Robison and Chairman Rocky Rodriguez attributed the lack of interest to theway the solicitation was written, saying it appeared to require a timeconsuming, formal response.

“We received no responses because it would be impossible for somebody to respond to what was requested of them in the timeframe that we requested it,”

Ure said.

But boardmember Maureen Canada, who has become a vocal dissenter, said she found it “comical” that the board would blame staffers for a crisis the board created.

“When is this board going to take responsibility for the circumstances that we have, rightnow?” she asked. “We created this issue, all of us. Stop the finger-pointing. We are in dire circumstances right now, and we’re going to sit here and blame the person fromprocurement? Really?”

Broward Health, legally called the North Broward Hospital District, operates four hospitalsanddozensof other medical facilities that serve the northern twothirds of Broward County. The district relies partly on property taxes for funding.

During a public comment period, former Broward Health commissioner Joseph Cobo told the board that reputable accounting firms would be wary of putting their name on an audit of such a troubled organization.

“Do you really, truly think that you’re going to get a firm that is going to put their brand name out there to do an audit in less than 10 weeks based on the situation you’ve put this organization in?” Cobo asked the board. “You guys don’t get it.”

In an interview after the meeting, Art Wallace, Broward Health’s chief financial officer, said he was attempting to negotiate extensions of the audit deadline, which he saidwasNov. 30 for the bond holders and Dec. 31 for banks that held the district’s letters of credit.

Vinnette Hall, who had publicly urged the board to retain KPMG as its auditor, said she would resign her position because “she felt the board was going in a different direction and she was looking for an exit strategy,” Rodriguez told the board, as Hall sat a few seats away.

Initially she didn’t say why she planned to leave.

But then Ure admonished her: “If what I’m hearing you say is it either goes in the direction that you want it to go or you don’t want to be here, I would say to you that doesn’t sound like somebody who’s a particularly team player.”

At this, she said her decision to leave wasn’t motivated by any particular board decisions.

“It’s about what I feel to be an atmosphere that is toxic that I’ve raised to the board before, and frankly, it has continued to be that, and, in my viewpoint at least, retaliatory,” she said. “I get that from the employees, and I feel that myself.”

“When is this board going to take responsibility for the circumstances that we have, right now? We created this issue, all of us. Stop the fingerMaureen Canada, board member