Exclusive: The closure, Tillman's near-$1 million compensation and the fund's "mess"
By Andrew Gumbel
Published: February 04, 2010
The new interim head of Motion Picture and Television Fund acknowledged to TheWrap Thursday that his organization had made a huge mess of trying to close its long-term-care nursing home.
“We f---ed up,” interim CEO Bob Beitcher said bluntly in an exclusive interview with TheWrap.
He added that he and the Fund’s board intended to spend the next several weeks reconfiguring their mission -- including the future of end-of-life care.
That, he said, would have to happen before they could even attempt to hire a permanent new chief executive.
Meanwhile, an examination of the fund's 2008 tax return revealed that David Tillman, the CEO who was forced to resign on Tuesday, received yet another pay raise as the hospital sank into apparent insolvency. His pay package rose to an astounding $932,000 in 2008, according to the return. (Below: The MPTF's 2008 Tax Form; see the whole document.)
Beitcher, a former president of Panavision with just two years’ service on the MPTF board, was staggeringly frank in his willingness to acknowledge more than a year’s worth of poor decision-making, and even poorer communication, with the Woodland Hills retirement community’s residents, their families and the media. “Clearly, we just sprang it on everyone.
We can now look back and say we f---ed up,” he said. We communicated it incredibly poorly, and it just made people crazy. We still haven’t been able to clarify it.” Beitcher’s whole tone could not have been more different from the secretive, defensive, spin-heavy approach taken under the leadership of his predecessor, Dr. David Tillman, He was willing to listen to any question and provide detailed answers. (See accompnanying story: "With Tillman Gone, Eyes Move to Ellis.)
Discussed were subjects including reasons for the closure; possible long-term care solutions; Tillman's compensation, as highlighted in the MPTF's 2008 tax returns; fundraising; and the Fund's past mistakes.
He told TheWrap he’d “love” to have a dialogue with members of the activist group Saving the Lives of Our Own, which has fought tooth and nail against the nursing home closure -- just as long as it was a real dialogue and not a shouting match.
And he spent his first full day on the job talking to members of the retirement community about options for longterm care.
Beitcher made no effort to defend Tillman, but he also made clear that the decision to close the nursing home was one shared by the entire board, which approved it unanimously, and that the poor handling of the consequences of that decision constituted a collective failure.
He characterized the current state of the MPTF as “a mess” and added: “One of the reasons that I’m here is that I’m familiar with the mess. I’m one 44th of the people who were the cause of the mess.” Beitcher did not apologize for the closure decision itself.
He said the nursing home was creating annual losses of $10 million -- something confirmed by the MPTF’s latest tax returns -- and was simply not a viable concern given the age of the building, the cost of providing long-term care and the difficulty the MPTF has had over the past several years in filling its 170 beds.
He appeared to distance himself quite considerably, however, from the assessment made by Tillman and others that the MPTF should get out of the longterm care business altogether and simply order the surviving residents of the facility to leave. “I’m still looking at other solutions,” he said. ""
Full Article and Source Click Here
Sources tell Me that 2 Berts are Representing the Motion Picture and Television Fund and one is Bert H. Deixler, Prokauer Rose LLP Los Angeles.
crystal cox whistleblower
No comments:
Post a Comment