To the Oregon Legislative Assembly,

For over a year, our community in and around Coos County has been under threat of seeing our beloved Bay Area Hospital wither in terms of services and capacity. As the only large DRG hospital on the Oregon coast, the impact on community health would be grim. Our community has rallied around the institution. Despite disagreements on approaches, every stakeholder has had the best interest of the community in mind as we have explored a litany of options, none of which have proved practical at addressing the need to refinance the Hospital's debt with the Bank of Montreal... until now.

After months of an intense turnaround plan, the Bay Area Hospital has worked with Representative Boomer Wright to introduce House Bill 4075-A, which would allow the State to utilize Unclaimed Property funds to back a refinancing of the Hospital's debt which will go a long way to restabilizing the Hospital moving forward. Passage of HB 4075-A is vital to the ongoing health of our community.

Recently, opposition to this plan has come about in the form of statewide education advocates. Some have erroneously characterized this plan as "robbing the Common School Fund"! Nothing could be further from the truth, given that the Hospital is willing to collateralize more than the amount of the loan, and the purpose of the bill is merely to provide the type of liquidity needed for refinancing.

But most importantly: To those of us who live here, there is precious little distinction between the health of our hospital and the health of our schools. Losing our community's largest employer would be a toll unto itself, to say nothing of the effect falling property values will have on our K-12 system and the obvious risk to the health and safety of our students, families, and faculty. We are able to see the hospital and our schools as part of a unified community that will either rise together or die together. When one considers the systemic effects of allowing the Bay Area Hospital to downgrade — including the loss of life and an extra tens of millions of dollars in additional healthcare reimbursement each year to the State — the decision becomes more clear.

Opposing HB 4075 is penny-wise and pound-foolish, in that opponents are asking lawmakers to forgo a small financial adjustment and in turn fail to prevent an economic and human services disaster that will ultimately be more costly in so many ways.

Please support HB 4075-A.