Inside Report for June 4, 2009

• By LANNY KELLER
• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: Jun 4, 2009 - Page: 9B

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One thing learned fast in Baton Rouge is tyou don’t have to dig very hard to get John V. Lombardi to say what he thinks.

Now, they’re learning the same thing in New Orleans. The blunt Yankee president of the LSU System is a key player in LSU’s plans to create an academic medical center — not, LSU officials say, another Charity Hospital — in the Crescent City.

In a speech to LSU boosters in New Orleans, Lombardi said LSU’s plan for the management of a new facility will work, and just about everyone else involved in the discussion should pipe down.

He said state Treasurer John N. Kennedy “didn’t tell the truth” when questioning LSU’s business plan.

A bill by House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, seeks to provide what the speaker calls a more balanced management board for the proposed new center.

Lombardi said he ignored the bill because he didn’t think anyone would take it seriously.

Then it unanimously passed in the House.

“It turns out there are not so many sensible people as I thought,” Lombardi said.

The Tucker plan, which Tulane favors over LSU’s proposed “memorandum of understanding” for the new center’s management, is a way to “go broke” with a hospital, according to Lombardi.

“Somebody’s got to be in charge,” and LSU’s plan includes everything Tulane asked for last year in negotiations about the memorandum.

“I don’t know if they can be made comfortable,” Lombardi huffed about Tulane.

Both sides say they want independent management and a representative board of institutions, including Tulane and other New Orleans universities, contributing to the health center. But Tulane believes LSU’s memorandum stacks the management deck for LSU.

A hospital that is run by the “inefficient, incompetent” patterns of the past will not be financially or academically viable, Lombardi said. He said the process is delayed by “historical things we’re hung up on and I don’t understand.”