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More on the ARMG Merger
PLUS, SCHOOL SECURITY AND A POSSIBLE UGA COVER-UP
By Blake Aued news@flagpole.com
A deal for Atlanta-based hospital chain Piedmont
Healthcare to take over Athens Regional Health Services
would erase almost $200 million of debt and invest nearly
$400 million in the local hospital, officials told Athens-
Clarke commissioners last week.
While the hospital announced plans to find a partner
last year, after former CEO Jamey Thaw left amidst finan
cial unsteadiness, and it entered into negotiations with
Piedmont in December, the Apr. 12 work session was the
first time the public has heard details about the takeover.
And it really is a takeover, not a merger or a partnership.
Piedmont would own Athens Regional and have the power
to approve major decisions like budgeting and hiring or fir
ing the CEO. “You have to think of this as a change-of-con-
trol transaction,” said Keith Anderson, the Chicago lawyer
who helped ARHS negotiate the deal.
But it comes with a big payoff. As part of the deal,
Piedmont will take on $195 million in bonds sold in
2007 and 2012, and pay off one chunk by next March
and the rest by Mar. 1, 2022. (ACC taxpayers are backing
those bonds, issued through the Clarke County Hospital
Authority.) In addition, Piedmont will spend $375 million
on capital improvements over the next seven years. Needs
include renovations to labor and delivery, the emergency
room and intensive care; more outpatient centers in outly
ing communities; and costly robotic surgical equipment and
accounting software, ARHS CEO Charles Peck said.
The health care industry is changing rapidly. Insurance
companies are merging, which means hospitals have to
merge, too, or they lose negotiating power over reimburse
ment rates. The chain that owned St. Mary’s Hospital
was bought by Trinity Health in 2013, and just last year
St. Mary’s bought a smaller hospital in Franklin County.
Government is more focused on outcomes, rather than
heads on beds. “It boils down to, if you don’t have scale, it
really is hard to compete,” said Jim Hopkins, chairman of
the ARHS’s board of trustees.
As described last week, most patients and employ
ees—in addition to being a regional health care hub,
ARHS is Athens’ second-largest employer—shouldn’t
notice much difference, or if they do, it should be positive.
Athens Regional Medical Center patients will have access
to Piedmont’s specialists in Atlanta, as well as national
cancer and heart-disease specialists at Piedmont-affiliated
hospitals in Houston and Cleveland. Some employees might
receive raises as they’re brought into the Atlanta pay scale.
No one will be laid off as a result of the merger, at least for
the first 12 months.
The hospital authority—the quasi-governmental agency
that’s a vestige of the old Athens General days—will remain
in place, serving as a watchdog to ensure Piedmont holds
up its end of the bargain.
The commission is being asked to approve the deal at
its May 3 meeting. The state attorney general’s office and
Federal Trade Commission must sign off, too.
SCHOOL BUDGET: The Clarke County School District will
hire additional teachers and security and give employees
raises if the school board approves Superintendent Philip
Lanoue’s proposed budget.
Officials are anticipating 4 percent growth in the tax
base, which, along with the state reinstating some of the
recession’s austerity cuts, has given the
district a bit of wiggle room. The pro
posed budget is $137 million, up about
7 percent from last year. The budget
includes 3-5 percent raises for the
district’s 2,700 employees, as well as
money to hire 16 new teachers (mostly
in middle schools).
In response to the Cedar Shoals sexual assault contro
versy, Lanoue wants to hire another police officer to station
at each of the high schools as well as three roving security
guards, bring UGA doctoral students into elementary
schools to help with behavioral challenges and start “transi
tion classes” for K-5 students who need additional help.
Lanoue also wants to hire an administrator to develop and
implement policy and restructure the human resources
department to hire someone focused on employee investi
gations. Board members said at their Apr. 14 meeting that
they like those proposals but would like to find money for
more counselors and behavioral specialists as well. Lanoue
reminded them that they added a social worker and psy
chologist two years ago.
The budget also includes funding for an administrator to
oversee CCSD’s transition to a charter district and to hire
an outside firm to recruit and train the local governance
teams that will be in charge of policy at the school level.
UGA WATCHDOG: A prominent ethics activist is calling
on the University of Georgia to fire Police Chief Jimmy
Williamson, settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former
employee who claims she was fired for reporting potential
fraud to higher-ups and reform the process for investiga
tions into employee wrongdoing. William Perry, the former
head of Common Cause Georgia who has started his own
group, Georgia Ethics Watchdogs, delivered a letter Apr. 15
to UGA President Jere Morehead with several demands.
Williamson fired Officer Jay Park in 2014 after Park
twice refused to arrest underage drinkers because of a state
law giving amnesty to students who request medical treat
ment for intoxication, even though his superiors ordered
him to make the arrests. Park filed a lawsuit and settled
with the Board of Regents for $325,000 last year, and his
police certification has been reinstated.
Perry said Williamson himself should be fired. “I think
it’s time for UGA to end its relationship with the police
chief and get a police chief who knows the law,” he said.
Then there’s the case of Sallyanne Barrow, a former
accountant for the UGA Alumni Association, which Perry
compared to the Jan Kemp scandal. Barrow reported that
her boss, Deborah Dietzler, was violating university policy
by scheduling her work travel around her hobby of running
marathons, among other things. An internal investigation
recommended that the university not renew Dietzler’s con
tract, but the language was softened, and Dietzler’s boss,
the now-retired Tom Landrum, gave her an equivalent job
while she found a new one. UGA never
reported the allegations to the Board
of Regents, as it was required to do.
Eventually Dietzler, with Landrum’s
help, took a lucrative position at the
University of Louisville, which she quit
when the WSB-TV story aired.
The WSB story also prompted the state attorney gen
eral’s office to investigate. On Mar. 28, Senior Assistant
Attorney General David McLaughlin wrote a letter to
higher-education officials stating that “at least some of Ms.
Dietzler’s activities likely constituted criminal conduct that
warranted further investigation and possible prosecution”
for theft and making false statements. However, the AG’s
office is dropping the case because the fact that Dietzler
wasn’t fired “makes a successful prosecution extremely
challenging,” McLaughlin wrote.
Perry called on Morehead—who was briefed on the
Dietzler investigation while it was ongoing—to settle
Barrow’s lawsuit, conduct an independent audit of all the
alumni association staff’s travel and leave for the past five
years and issue a plan to improve the Fraud Committee, the
internal group that investigated Dietzler.
At best, UGA’s investigation was incompetent; at worst,
it was a coverup, Perry said. “This university has messed up,
it’s messed up big, and it needs to fix it,” he said. O
This university has
messed up, it’s messed
up big, and it needs to fix it.
Yjbl
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6 FLAGPOLE.COM-APRIL 20, 2016