On May 9, Derek Daley informed the Blue Mountain Hospital District Board of Directors that he intended to step down as the hospital district’s chief executive officer effective Aug. 3, a little less than 90 days’ notice.

That’s a fairly tight window to hire someone for such a critical position, a fact of which the board members seem to have been acutely aware. In fact, just a week later, on May 16, the board authorized Chair Amy Kreger to offer the position to Cam Marlowe, who had previously served as the hospital district’s chief financial officer between 2018 and 2020.

Marlowe accepted the offer — which came with a salary of $320,000 a year plus a $50,000 signing bonus and a $35,000 annual retention bonus after two years — and started his new job on June 27.

By any measure, that’s fast work by the board.

Judged by the measure of public involvement, it’s too fast.

As Steven Mitchell reported in our July 13 edition, the Blue Mountain Hospital District is a public entity, supported by Grant County taxpayers to the tune of $1.4 million in the most recent tax year. The board members are public officials, elected by Grant County voters.

The public interest, therefore, should be at the center of everything the board does.

And yet, in its rush to hire a new CEO, the board seems to have completely forgotten to include the public in the process.

Both the May 9 and May 16 meetings were outside the board’s regular meeting schedule, but neither met the public notice requirements set out in Oregon law. Rather than notifying the newspaper so that we could inform the public of these upcoming meetings, the board posted the agendas in the hospital cafeteria and a nearby hallway. (Kreger told the paper that notice of the meetings was also posted on the hospital district’s website, but when we checked we could not find a notice of either meeting there.) Moreover, based on the official minutes, virtually all of the discussion at both meetings took place in executive session — so even if the public had been there, it would not have been able to listen in.

Perhaps even more concerning, the board apparently saw no need to advertise a government job that pays more than $300,000 a year. The directors were already familiar with Marlowe from his previous stint as CFO and offered him the position without interviewing anyone else. While that may speak well for Marlowe’s abilities, isn’t it possible that there were even more highly qualified candidates out there somewhere? Surely the board could have named an interim CEO while it took the time to conduct a broad-based search for a new top executive.

Make no mistake, the Blue Mountain Hospital District is vital to the well-being of Grant County residents. In addition to running the county’s only hospital, it also operates the Strawberry Wilderness Community Clinic, the Blue Mountain Care Center and a home health and hospice service. It employs around 250 people and provides ambulance service throughout the county through a mix of paid employees and dedicated volunteers.

But Grant County residents are not well-served when the board, in the interest of expediency, short-circuits the public involvement built into Oregon law.

It bears repeating that Marlowe, the new CEO, has done nothing wrong here. Any blame that attaches to his hurried hiring belongs to the board alone.

We want the Blue Mountain Hospital District to succeed, and we wish Marlowe well as he settles into his new job at the helm of one of Grant County’s most important civic institutions.

But we sincerely hope that the board will take a hard look at the way it does business and will, from here on out, make sure the public has every opportunity for meaningful involvement in important decisions affecting the district — as the law requires.