Jack Hickey is my kind of libertarian:

After losing more than a dozen elections in 20 years, you’d think Jack Hickey would want to hang on to the first office he finally won. But the outspoken San Mateo County Libertarian — who lost elections for governor, senator (U.S. and state), assemblyman, community college board and open space district before winning a seat on the Sequoia Healthcare District board in 2002 — is trying to abolish the district.

At a board meeting Wednesday Hickey plans to propose that voters be asked if the district should quit taking the $5.5 million in annual property taxes it gets — and essentially close up shop.

The district, formed in 1946, built and ran the public Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City until selling it in 1996 to Catholic HealthCare West for $30 million. With no public hospital to control, the district continues to rake in property taxes for a variety of community health care programs, such as children’s health insurance, school nurses and free clinics. But it still doles out more than $1 million a year to the hospital, even though taxpayers don’t own it anymore.

Posted in uncategorized on May 29th, 2005 by ThePatheticEarthling | RSS 2.0 |