Thank you, Matt Ready, for your leadership and integrity. I can see why you were excluded from secret discussions about the future of our public hospital.

While state law prohibits disclosures regarding executive sessions, I believe your actions are more than justified. Without your courage, this apparently illegal behavior might not have been stopped before it was too late.

I believe commissioners who deliberately violated the Open Public Meetings Act should apologize and resign. I also believe CEO Mike Glenn, who apparently conspired with some but not all commissioners in a way that might have pre-empted any public notice or input before taking action in secret should be fired. And if the PIO was aware of what was going on and knowingly issued a statement with such a misleading omission, they should be replaced as well. If there are costs to the hospital district for violating state laws, those should be born by the perpetrators, not the taxpayers.

There is no exemption in the Open Public Meetings Act for discussing financial concerns, even urgent ones. We the people are entitled to transparency and to public officials we can trust, and I thank you for being the one official who did his job.

Barney Burke

Port Townsend