Incoming Munroe chair resigns post

OCALA — The incoming chairman of the Munroe Regional Medical Center board of directors resigned Wednesday, a day after the Marion County Commission dealt a blow to the hospital’s hopes for tax support.

Stan Hanson, a retired Procter & Gamble executive and a long-time hospital board member, notified hospital officials of his resignation in a letter that blistered the County Commission for its “woeful (Neanderthal-like) lack of understanding and appreciation of Munroe and its Board’s contribution to this community.”

Hanson was reacting to a vote Tuesday by the County Commission not to endorse Munroe’s proposal to create an independent hospital district that could request up to 2 mills of property taxes to pay for hospital operations and buildings.

Hospital officials and board members have fretted openly in recent months about Munroe’s financial picture and were exploring a tax as a way to prop up the bottom line.

As a public hospital, they have argued, Munroe offers many needed services at a financial loss and provides millions of dollars a year in care to those who can’t pay.

Hanson said his resignation comes after several weeks of “soul searching,” but it’s clear from his letter that Tuesday’s vote by the County Commission provided all the incentive he needed.

“Munroe is being politically pushed down the road toward financial destruction of a quality institution,” he wrote. “I don’t want to be a part of that event.”

Stan McClain, one of three county commissioners who voted not to endorse the independent district, said he was disappointed at Hanson’s resignation.

McClain denied that the County Commission has an “anti-tax” mentality, as Hanson argued in his resignation letter. He said the hospital simply failed to make a compelling case for a tax.

“We’re trying to see how we can stretch every dollar we can,” he said. “If the need is there (for a tax) — and it may be there, I don’t know because they haven’t come to us to demonstrate the need — then I need to be able to go to the people and make a case for this.”

Dr. Michael Jordan, one of the seven hospital district trustees, said he tried to talk Hanson out of resigning.

“I’m really sorry to see him go,” Jordan said. “I think the board is in a critical time in the history of the hospital, and he has a lot of experience and knowledge.

“I think he’s frustrated,” Jordan said of Hanson, “that he’s done his level best to make this a better community and he feels like he’s bucked up against the County Commission too many times.”

But Hanson said late Wednesday that he isn’t abandoning the hospital’s cause. As a private citizen, he can speak to commissioners, attend meetings and educate the community in a way that he can’t as a hospital board member.

“I can probably be a little bit more aggressive than I have been,” Hanson said. “I can be an ambassador for the hospital. As a member of the board, I had to be a little more careful.”