Orange County Register

The Tri-City Healthcare District in Oceanside hired Orange County attorney and political broker Phil Greer on Monday to try to get an $80 million loan from the county.

Greer is the personal attorney for Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Chriss Street, who would have to recommend the loan. He formerly represented four of the five county supervisors, who ultimately would have to approve it.

Chriss Street

The hospital board paid $50,000 to retain Greer and agreed to pay him an additional $200,000 if he can close the deal by Sept. 9, the North County Times reported.

Unfortunately for Greer, the supes are taking the next two weeks off. They won’t meet again until Sept. 15.

Greer is defending Street in a $7 million fraud lawsuit brought by the Fruehauf Trailer Corp. bankruptcy trust. Street’s other lawyers quit last October, citing $640,000 in unpaid legal bills. Greer said Street is current on his legal bills to him.

Greer said he will lobby the supervisors but not Street.

“I have been assigned to represent the district before the board,” Greer said. “I have absolutely nothing to do with the treasurer’s office analysis.”

Street said the hospital district has sent his office financial documents but no specific proposal for a loan.

“Our investment team’s only in the preliminary stages of doing due diligence on safety and liquidity,” Street said.  “I don’t even know what we’re going to look at.”

But Larry Anderson, Tri-City’s CEO, said he sent Street’s office a specific request — $80 million with an interest rate one-half percentage point above the county treasury’s average yield.

Anderson said Greer had told him that “we’ll get a proposal from the treasurer as early as this week.”

If Street decides the loan is a good deal for the county, he would then have to ask the supervisors to okay it. The county’s investment policy allows the treasurer to loan money to public agencies inside the county but not outside it, Street spokesman Keith Rodenhuis said.

Street said Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, asked  a few weeks ago if the county could help the hospital, which is in her district.

Tri-City borrowed $58.3 million in ”auction-rate securities” — in effect a series of weekly loans — in spring 2007. 

The loan’s timing, just a few months before the worldwide credit crunch, was disastrous.  Interest rates soared from the expected 3 percent to peak at 17.5 percent. The hospital currently is paying $500,000 a month more than it had expected.

Anderson said the hospital first tried to borrow money from San Diego Treasurer Dan McAllister, but “the discussions just were not robust. Orange County’s reaction was much different.”