County cut CEO's severance package
Hospital CEO's buyout reduced. County cut buy out cost of CEO
By Rebecca Vesely, STAFF WRITER, Oakland Tribune
Monday, May 17, 2004

A controversial two-year severance package for the former CEO of the Alameda County Medical Center that spurred state legislation was quietly renegotiated down to 15 months early this year.

Ken Cohen, who served as CEO of the medical center for more than two years and was terminated last September, had a severance agreement of two-years salary in his original contract.

But in late January, Cohen and the medical center's Board of Trustees reached a settlement, paying him 15 months salary, or $353,682.

"My employment contract provided for two years of severance," Cohen wrote in an e-mail. "Because of the 18-month state constitutional limitation (on severance) and my willingness to work with the medical center and its budget crisis, I received a negotiated severance of 15 months."

The settlement agreement was approved by the board in closed session at a Jan. 26 meeting and signed by board President Ilene Weinreb.

After Cohen's departure from the medical center in November, the two-year severance, which would have cost the county more than a half-million dollars, became a lightning rod. It was cited at numerous public hearings about Measure A, a half-cent sales tax proposal that voters approved in March to fund the medical center, which includes Highland Hospital in Oakland.

The ballot argument against the sales tax cited the two-year severance as an example of mismanagement at the hospital system.

The severance became the impetus for a state bill authored by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, to limit payouts to medical center executives.

Hancock's bill, AB 2630, which passed the state Assembly with no opposition Monday, extends state rules on county employees' severance limitations of 18 months to the Alameda County Medical Center. The medical center is governed through an authority so is not strictly a county entity.

The idea for the bill stemmed from a meeting last fall between Hancock's office and county officials.

Hancock was never notified of the renegotiated settlement

reached in January. The bill was introduced on Feb. 20.

"What can you say?" Hancock said. "You would think they (the trustees) would tell people (about the renegotiated severance)."

Hancock said her bill is "still good public policy," because it closes a loophole. "We want every dollar possible to go to patient care at the medical center," she said.

A spokesman for the medical center said he did not know why the renegotiated severance was not brought to the public's or Hancock's attention.

Supervisor President Gail Steele, who appointed Weinreb to the board, said she thought the severance was negotiated down to 18 months. She said she was not involved in the bill discussions.

"If I had had a conversation with her (Hancock), I would have told her it had gotten settled," Steele said.

Contact Rebecca Vesely at rvesely@angnewspapers.com.