Hickey challenges fellow health care district board members

Sequoia race takes a turn for the wacky

August 24, 2008
By Shaun Bishop / Daily News Staff Writer

Winning one seat on the Sequoia Healthcare District's board wasn't enough for Jack Hickey. He's making a run for a second seat in November.

Hickey, a current member of the board with two years left on his term, is running against two incumbent board members for one of their two open seats. If he wins, he says he'll resign the seat he holds now and assume the new four-year seat. And elections officials say the situation appears to be legal.

What's behind his wacky plan?

Hickey says he wants to win an election over his colleagues to prove that residents back his long-standing quest to dissolve the district, an opinion only he holds on the five-member board.

He says the taxpayer-funded district, created in 1950 to fund Sequoia Hospital's construction and operation, has strayed from its mission by giving grants to nonprofit health programs or buying defibrillators.

"I'm trying to get a mandate from the people," said Hickey, who was narrowly re-elected to a second term on the board in 2006. "If I get a lot more votes than the incumbents, I think it will say something."

County attorneys say as long as he resigns one of the seats if he wins, the scheme is legal, Elections Manager David Tom said.

"So far we, don't find anything that prevents someone who's sitting on the board (from running) for another seat," Tom said. "Obviously, if he does somehow win, he cannot occupy two seats at once."

If Hickey wins and takes on the new seat, the board would likely appoint a new person to Hickey's newly vacant seat with two years left.

Malcolm MacNaughton, an incumbent who is running against Hickey and two others in November, says the situation makes "a mockery of the electoral process."

While he says he has nothing personal against Hickey - "I like Jack, and I also think a lot of his points are well founded" - he said Hickey should have to resign his current seat before he can run for another one.

Kathleen Kane, the other incumbent running, agrees with MacNaughton, but said she believes the two incumbets will prevail anyway. Both won by at least 5,000 votes when they were last re-elected in 2004.

"I certainly don't lose any sleep over it," Kane said with a laugh.

Both Kane and MacNaughton say they're running for re-election so they can keep a close watch on the progress of a $240 million rebuild of Sequoia Hospital, which the board approved last December through a complex agreement with the hospital's owner Catholic Healthcare West.

A fourth candidate, registered nurse Kim Griffin, also filed papers to run in the district, which encompasses 220,000 residents in Redwood City, San Carlos, Belmont, Menlo Park, Woodside, Atherton and Portola Valley.

The district's staff and attorneys have long said that Hickey's dissolution plan wouldn't work. Even if the district were eliminated, the property tax money would be redistributed among state and local agencies and would not return directly to local taxpayers.

"If it doesn't go to health care, it's going to go to a sewer system someplace," Kane said. "I sure would rather see it go to health care."

Still, Hickey says the district's future should at least be put to a vote to let residents decide whether it should continue giving grants or be eliminated.

"If the people want a health care district, they should say so at the ballot box," Hickey said.



E-mail Shaun Bishop at sbishop@dailynewsgroup.com.

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