Well, the depth of LA’s Hospital mess keeps getting clearer–now the LA Times is reporting that the construction of the new County-USC Medical Center is exploding, and will now be 22% over the original estimates.  Oh yeah, the project is now 1 year overdue and the clock keeps ticking.  (http://www.latimes.c…)

The sadest part of this is that this hospital is not really what LA needs: the county has long had too many hospital beds and not enough local clinics to meet pressing community needs.  Most recently, the Board of Supervisors and the mis-managed County government allowed the vital resource that is (was!) King-Drew Medical Center to die.  Or rather, they lynched it through years of incompetence–with the effect that thousands of residents in the most impacted communities of LA will now not have health care resources they need. 

Why would the Supervisors back such a nonsensical policy?  Because they see Hospitals as Politically beneficial–lots of union votes and contributions to support their uncontested elections, and the opportunity to grandstand around big buildings, rather than doing the tawdry work needed to actually lead or even just manage the nation’s largest local government. 

Equally important, not all Supevisors are created equally.  While Yvonne Burke snoozes in her Brentwood Hills condo, Gloria Molina, Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe have grabbed all the loot they think they can for their districts.  And Zev Yaroslavsky just waves his arms around, like “what can I do about it?”.  What a mess!

What is the solution?  Not only do we need to through these bums out, we need to change the way LA County is run.  We need a single, clearly accountable County Executive, balanced by a large, part-time County Legislature.  Until then, the self-serving Supes will just keep rolling over the same terrible decisions.