Cookeville’s Mayor Lands Executive Role At The City-Owned Hospital, And Council Members Want An Investigation

The Cookeville city council is questioning how the mayor landed a new job at the city-owned hospital. Three of the five members tell WPLN News they support an independent investigation, which will be discussed at a special called meeting Thursday evening.

Mayor Ricky Shelton was hired in December to a newly-created executive position with Cookeville Regional Medical Center. He was still a member of the hospital’s board when he was hired.

Cookeville Regional is one of the largest employers in the city, and it’s effectively owned by the city itself. The city council picks most of the board members. The mayor also sits on the board. That board hires the hospital’s CEO. And that person, Paul Korth, is who hired the mayor to be his chief strategy officer.

“When you start adding it all up — not that I’d want to look the other way, anyway — but it’s very hard not to take a deeper look into everything,” says Vice Mayor Laurin Wheaton.

Even Wheaton was taken by surprise when Shelton told her he was going to put her on the hospital board in his place. The announcement was made at the Dec. 10 council meeting, two days after the hospital announced Shelton’s hiring. They altered the hospital authority bylaws to make sure it wouldn’t create regulatory problems.

Wheaton says she’s happy to serve but has many unanswered questions about how the hiring came about.

Council member Mark Miller says he believes Shelton should have stepped down from the board — and also stepped down as mayor — even applying for a job at the city-owned hospital.

“Because if you are applying for a position you have authority over, to me, that’s extremely ethically wrong,” he says.

Proposed outside review

The city attorney, who is also a hospital board member, disagrees. In a council meeting Feb. 4, Danny Rader said he finds nothing “improper,” adding that the hiring would be no different than a cafeteria worker at the hospital deciding to run for city council – which his allowed.

“That’s true whether it’s a nurse. That’s true whether it’s a custodial worker. That’s true whether it’s a nutrition worker,” he said.

But council members say this is different because the mayor has already spent six years overseeing the hospital. Then he took an executive-level position.

The chair of the hospital board, Allen Ray, tells WPLN News he has questioned some decisions that CEO Paul Korth has made, but Shelton’s hiring isn’t one of them.

A spokesman for the state comptroller says the potential conflicts of interest will be reviewed during the city’s annual audit. But for now, it’s a matter for the city council to handle. City council members also say they’re concerned that a conflict of interest could violate the hospitals corporate integrity agreement with federal regulators. Last year, Cookeville Regional paid $4.1 million to settle charges of Medicare kickbacks to physicians.

When they meet tonight at 5:30 p.m., the council plans to discuss council member Charles Womack’s proposal to hire outside attorneys to assist in investigating any legal or ethical lapses.

Presiding over the meeting will be Mayor Shelton, who did not recuse himself last week when the outside legal help was first proposed. He voted to defer any decision.

But he tells WPLN News he plans to recuse himself from any future votes about whether to launch an inquiry, as well as any votes involving the hospital during the rest of his term, which ends in 2022.

“I’m an open book,” Shelton says. “These things were done ethically, legally and correctly, and I stand by that.”