Sunday, Jan. 21, 2007 | 7:20 a.m.
In the days since University Medical Center Chief Executive Lacy Thomas was fired for consistently misrepresenting the extent of the hospital's deepening financial losses, race has played a prominent - and sometimes uncomfortable - role in the public dialogue over his ouster.
"If this man was white, this wouldn't be happening," thundered one of Thomas' defenders, a black UMC contractor who himself has been targeted by police in their investigation of the hospital.
And when Thomas' strongest backer on the Clark County Commission was asked during a TV interview whether she was linked to any of the deals that led to Thomas' termination, she shot back: "Is it because we're both African-Americans?"
Just as race has been overtly injected into the debate over Thomas' firing, it also has posed a largely unspoken, sensitive question about the months leading up to that moment:
Did political correctness contribute to the debacle at UMC by making county officials reluctant to press too hard for answers when financial details increasingly were not adding up at a public hospital where most of the top administrative posts were filled by blacks?
County leaders adamantly insist the answer is no, saying that from Thomas' hiring to firing - and in particular, during the growing controversy of the past year - race played no part in any of their decisions.
Others, however, suggest that in a nation still far from attaining the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a racially blind society - and where the mere mention of race still leaves many squirming uncomfortably - it is difficult to dismiss race as a potential factor.
As Michael Green, a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada, put it: "I would be interested to see if race ultimately had made the county gun-shy."
Clark County Manager Virginia Valentine fired Thomas on Tuesday after an audit revealed that UMC had lost $34.3 million in fiscal 2006 - $15.5 million more than Thomas had been telling Clark County commissioners since last fall. Even as Thomas was being told to clean out his office Tuesday, Metro Police were serving search warrants on UMC looking for evidence that Thomas had directed contracts to friends from Chicago.
At the same time, Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, long Thomas' most ardent booster on the commission, announced plans to resign. While she emphasized that her resignation was in no way influenced by Thomas' woes, their closeness left some wondering.
Since then, comments about the racial dynamics of Tuesday's tumultuous events have popped up daily.
Racial issues also figure into the question of why the county waited so long to take action to stem the hospital's bleeding.
Indeed, even as some of those involved in the saga have been quick to play the race card, others looking at the ordeal from the outside have wondered aloud whether the fear of just that might have prevented county officials from acting swiftly.
Starting in late 2005 and for most of last year, Thomas did not provide the county the required monthly reports on UMC's finances, most often citing problems with a new computer system. (A police affidavit last week said that excuse was untrue, noting that many of the monthly reports were not provided simply because Thomas did not ask for them to be prepared.)
Throughout 2006, county leaders questioned Thomas and expressed frustration over the skipped reports, but nonetheless allowed the situation to drag on month after month.
Moreover, the first serious questions about whether Thomas was steering UMC contracts to friends and fraternity brothers from Chicago surfaced even earlier, in November 2005.
Yet it took 14 months - and a damning audit that exposed Thomas' earlier deceptions - for the county to finally take action.
That glacial pace prompts some to turn the racial question as it is usually asked - Is a black person being treated unfairly because of his color? - on its head.
The question to be asked about the Thomas and UMC mess, they say, is: Would the county commissioners have been as patient if the hospital's boss had been white?
Commission Chairman Rory Reid insists that Thomas' race did not make him slow to act, or inclined to give second, third and fourth chances a white executive might not have received.
"Not with me it didn't," Reid said.
Atkinson Gates, was one of the first to introduce race into the discussion.
Of the seven commissioners, Atkinson Gates had been Thomas' strongest supporter. So strong, in fact, that when Valentine contacted commissioners last weekend to tell them she was planning on firing Thomas, she did not call Atkinson Gates, figuring that she would tip off Thomas.
Even after Tuesday's revelations in the police affidavit, Atkinson Gates said she still had not lost confidence in Thomas. "I just give people the benefit of the doubt as best I can," she said.
When asked whether Thomas' troubles contributed to her decision to step down, she said: "That's what they say about all black people."
Later in the week, during a television appearance on "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," she was asked about a recent news account that said police were hoping to find Atkinson Gates' fingerprints on one of the suspicious UMC contracts.
"Is it because we're both African-Americans?" she said.
Atkinson Gates is not the only one raising the issue.
Thomas' friend, Bill Taylor, who owns one of the Chicago companies that received a contract police are now investigating, told local media: "If this man was white, this wouldn't be happening ... He's an African-American in a redneck state.
"They hated his guts the day he walked in there ... There's a lot of racist folks that don't want him there, and they'll do anything to get him out of there, including lying."
The police affidavit suggests race shaped Thomas' decisions.
Christopher Roth, UMC's construction director, said Thomas once complained that there were not any minority contractors on a hospital construction project. Roth said he explained that several Hispanic subcontractors were working on the project. "According to Roth, Thomas told him that was not what he meant, he meant that there were no black contractors," the police affidavit says.
The number of commissioners willing to respond to the question of whether race entered into some of the key decisions in Thomas' case - only three current and one former commissioner returned calls for this story - underlines the uneasiness that racial issues can bring to public policymaking.
Those who did respond - former Commissioner Myrna Williams and Commissioners Bruce Woodbury, Tom Collins and Reid - each said that race played no role in how they handled UMC's financial crisis or in their decision to support Valentine's ouster of Thomas.
"His race had nothing to do with either of those things," Reid said.
"It's not something I think about," Woodbury said.
And Valentine added: "It was not at all a factor in his hiring and it was not factor in terminating his agreement."
For the first few months that Thomas blamed his failure to file the monthly financial reports on the new computer system, that seemed a reasonable explanation, county officials said. By the time that excuse and others were wearing thin, the county was nearing the end of its fiscal year, causing county leaders to decide to simply wait for an independent annual audit as a more comprehensive look at the hospital's financial health.
Valentine's replacement of County Manager Thom Reilly when he left for another job last summer also slowed efforts to bring the UMC matter to a head.
"This would have probably gone down sooner if Thom hadn't left and Virginia just come on," Collins said.
Still, the dialogue to date surrounding last week's events at UMC shows why county officials might think twice before coming down hard on Thomas or some of his top administrators, such as Chief Financial Officer Richard Powell and Chief Operating Officer Marlo Hodges. Powell and Hodges, both black, were put on paid leave last week after being named in the police affidavit.
Craig Clayton Sr., director of the International Institute for Diversity and Cross-Cultural Management at the University of Houston, said it is not uncommon for organizations in general to hesitate before taking action involving a minority.
A litigious society and fear of their actions being labeled racist can give managers pause, he said.
"That is always going to make most organizations make sure they cross their t's and dot their i's," Clayton said.
While county officials contend questions of race did not influence their action - or inaction - they acknowledge that there is an inherent discomfort with most racial matters.
"It's uncomfortable for everybody when those issues are raised," Woodbury said.
Valentine said she felt a need to wait for the independent auditor to confirm her suspicions before firing Thomas. Otherwise, it would have been a matter of differing opinions, she said.
"It is a sensitive issue," she said of the race factor. "There were some steps we needed to go through.
"It's not about race, it's about fair treatment. In every case, you have to ask, 'Am I treating this person as fairly as everyone else?' But that's with age, ethnicity, religion, all of that."
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