Why hasn’t GMH held anyone accountable for the illegal net payroll debacle, as it did with Benita Manglona in 2019?

In 2019, Calvo administration holdover Benita Manglona was fired by the new Leon Guerrero administration after she told the Guam Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees GMH was only able to make net payroll during a then-recent period. She was the hospital’s chief financial officer at the time, and had been in that position since the second Calvo term.

Last month, Kandit began receiving information that GMH once again had fallen behind on its legal obligation to make gross payroll, and was only paying paychecks without making payments to employee contributions and deductions. This is illegal.

On Monday, and after two weeks of GMH officials avoiding the confirmation of the illegal activity, Kandit was able to confirm with the Government of Guam Retirement Fund that GMH, indeed, recently and illegally did not remit contributions to the fund.

Kandit reached out to GMH officials – again – to ask whether the acting administrator (Lillian Perez-Posadas is on leave) will be taking action against the current CFO, as GMH in 2019 did against Ms. Manglona.

We asked why immediate action was not taken once the net payroll issue was made known to hospital officials.

We asked why the current CFO is being treated differently from Ms. Manglona.

GMH officials have not responded to the inquiry, again.

The ultimate irony

Ms. Manglona’s work in securing the adjustment of Medicare reimbursement rates upward led directly to GMH’s revenue increase that sustained its operations for at least two years. It was her work as CFO that stabilized GMH finances, yet GMH fired her immediately upon announcing the net payroll incidences in 2019. And this was after Manglona repeatedly and publicly sounded the alarm about the dire financial condition of the hospital, payments a certain insurance company was failing to remit, and the need to make payroll. It was before the new reimbursement rates had gone into effect.

The irony, if it isn’t already apparent in your thoughts, is that GMH fired Ms. Manglona  (who was transparent about the fiscal crisis at the time) for failing to make gross payroll, hired a new CFO who could not do what she did, then failed to make gross payroll again and, this time, hid it and held no one accountable.

Where is the outrage from GMH’s acting administrator? Where is the outrage from the Board of Trustees? Where is the outrage from Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero, who repeatedly tells senators and the public she’s “in charge of the hospital?”

My, how the tables have turned.