While San Mateo County officials maintain they have yet to decide how to distribute $60 million a year if the Measure A half-cent sales tax increase passes on Nov. 6, Seton Medical Center and its parent group have donated $885,868 to the campaign.
The Daly City hospital admits it could use a slice of the tax revenue to pay for costly state-required seismic safety work. The $765,805 Seton donated and $120,063 its parent organization, Daughters of Charity Health System, chipped in together account for roughly 90 percent of the $990,970 raised so far by the “Yes on Measure A” campaign, finance statements released Friday show. The manager of that campaign is a Seton official on leave from the hospital.
Almost all of the rest of the funds raised came from the California State Council of Service Employees Issues Committee, a political contribution arm of the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which donated $100,000. The union represents government employees as well as hospital and other health care workers.
“I think they clearly want the county to help them,” San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Adrienne Tissier said Wednesday when asked to comment about the amount Seton Medical Center donated. “We haven’t committed to them on any level.”
Jim Schuessler, Seton’s interim president and CEO, said in a written statement provided Wednesday that the hospital is supporting Measure A to help preserve crucial county services. If the measure passes, the hospital hopes to work with the county “to determine the role they would like Seton to play in providing for the health care needs of San Mateo County residents,” he added.
A spokesperson for the Daughters of Charity Health System referred questions about the organization’s contribution to Seton.
The possibility of giving some of the sales tax revenue to the private Catholic hospital was publicly disclosed about three months ago in a memo written by Tissier and board Vice President Don Horsley for a July 24 supervisors meeting. The board that day voted 4-1, with Dave Pine dissenting, to put the tax measure on the ballot.
The measure states that the board is considering using general funds to “provide substantial assistance to Seton Medical Center to rebuild.”
The measure also lists more than a dozen other possible uses the sales tax revenue could finance, including child abuse protection programs, 911 emergency dispatch services, neighborhood health clinics, jail staffing and county park operations.
The manager of “Yes on Measure A,” Tina Ahn, is a development executive with Seton who took a leave from the hospital, confirmed Fred Muir, a spokesman for the campaign. She was asked by other members of the campaign to take on the job because of her fundraising experience, Muir said, adding that he doesn’t know who specifically tapped her.
About half of the nearly $1 million raised for Measure A has been spent on television air time and production costs, as well as for polling, campaign literature and election consultants, according to the Form 460 report filed by the campaign.
Seton needs to be seismically upgraded by 2020 to comply with a state law that seeks to ensure California’s acute medical facilities are earthquake safe.
In a meeting with The Daily News and San Jose Mercury News editorial boards on Tuesday, Tissier and Horsley said Seton serves a substantial portion of the county’s Medi-Cal population. They said they don’t know how much Measure A money the county might give the hospital, but Horsley noted that if it does Seton would be expected to commit to some county patient care.
Seton spokesman Kevin Andrus said the hospital trusts the Board of Supervisors can decide how much money would be “appropriate” for the hospital. He confirmed a statement made by Schuessler last month to the Catholic San Francisco newspaper suggesting that Seton expects to receive about $15 million from the county, although he didn’t confirm the amount.
If Seton were to close, the supervisors cautioned, the hospital’s patients would seek care from the county or be left without any.
“It they get in trouble, we’re in trouble,” Tissier said.
Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger @dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.
