Fired UMC chief’s trial set
As University Medical Center hemorrhaged money in 2006, then-Chief Executive Officer Lacy Thomas was fighting for autonomy behind the scenes.
Three years after being hired to turn around the county's struggling public hospital, he wanted to eliminate oversight by county administrators and answer directly to Clark County commissioners.
Thomas' campaign for independence, which included threats to quit, raised enough red flags for longtime Commissioner Bruce Woodbury that he asked the county manager to fire Thomas.
"That just didn't smell right," Woodbury recalled. "And it turned out there were good reasons he didn't want anyone looking over his shoulder."
In the months that followed, county leaders learned the hospital had lost $50 million the previous two years and that Thomas was under criminal investigation by Las Vegas police.
Thomas eventually was fired and indicted on charges of enriching his friends with no-work hospital contracts that cost UMC as much as $10 million. His trial on five counts of theft and five counts of misconduct by a public officer starts today in the courtroom of District Judge Michael Villani. The charges are felonies.
His lawyer, Daniel Albregts, did not return a call for comment, but in a May court filing wrote, "The defense is confident that when an independent party hears all of the evidence in this case, Thomas will be exonerated of all charges."
Prosecutor Scott Mitchell, who is leading the case, has said Thomas treated Clark County's only public hospital as a financial trough to pay old pals from his days at Chicago's largest public hospital.
An example the prosecutor has used came from county lawyer Mary-Anne Miller, who told a grand jury that shortly after taking over, Thomas told her he didn't care about laws or regulations regarding hospital contracts.
Miller is among more than a dozen potential witnesses who could take the stand during the trial, which is expected to last two to three weeks.
The witness list also includes county auditor Jerry Carroll, county manager Virginia Valentine and two former UMC executives who resigned during Thomas' tenure and cooperated with police.
The criminal charges involve hospital contracts with five companies that authorities say were awarded no-work or unnecessary hospital contracts thanks to their ties to Thomas.
One of those companies, ACS Consultant Co., was run by Thomas' longtime friends or associates, the indictment states.
The contract was "grossly unfavorable" to the hospital and required UMC to pay ACS for work already being done by the county, according to the indictment.
ACS has sued UMC over the contract dispute, claiming the hospital owes it about $1 million.
Other companies listed in the indictment include Las Vegas-based TBL Construction, Premier Alliance Management, Crystal Communications and Frasier Systems Group.
Premier Alliance Management was owned by Orlando Jones, godson and one-time chief of staff to Cook County Board President John Stroger, an influential player in Chicago politics whose name graces the county hospital there that once was run by Thomas.
Jones, who also co-owned Crystal Communications with Martello Pollock, shot and killed himself in 2007 on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Frasier Systems, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting work from UMC, had no other clients besides the hospital and was headquartered in the garage of a house owned by the mother of company owner Gregory Boone, Mitchell said during a February 2008 hearing.
The county hired Thomas in November 2003 to run the financially strapped public hospital. He had been running Chicago's largest public hospital when a national search firm identified him as a top candidate for the UMC job.
The hospital's financial picture brightened under Thomas' reign, but in mid-2006 he stopped providing monthly financial reports to the commission, blaming it on new computer software.
In November 2006 UMC officials said the hospital was expected to lose $18.8 million for the year.
In January 2007 outside auditors revised that figure to $34.3 million. Thomas was fired at a County Commission meeting while police raided UMC offices in their search for evidence.
"The scandal that came out of that situation ... was very damaging and put a real cloud over UMC, as well as further question marks over county government," Woodbury said.
Contact reporter Brian Haynes
at bhaynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0281.
