Deborah Joyce Dowe

The Muhlenberg Independents

Plainfield, NJ, 07062

October 12, 2017

Honorable Katherine R. Dupuis, P.J.S.C.

c/o Clerk of the Superior Court
New Annex Bldg, 1st Floor
Elizabethtown Plaza, Elizabeth, NJ, 07207

Re: In the Matter of the Application of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center

and the Muhlenberg Foundation
Docket No.

Dear Judge Dupuis,

The serious inequities that generated these resources have been made worse by the very entity
that seeks to profit from having eliminated access to high quality acute care that existed for 131
years.

Muhlenberg land was purchased through Public Subscription and the corporation amassed
substantial holdings and rental real estate to support its mission as a privately supported
charitable hospitable long before the government was expected to provide charity care. Much
of the donor intent being eliminated supported a mission to help the needy, Black people and
the poor. A timely cy pres proceeding could have preserved more of Muhlenberg's mission and
kept a medically under-served community from deteriorating into a healthcare desert.
Questions raised in the January 2015 ,Docket No. C 1077 14 Order To Show Cause have
grown more significant as JFK moves to mer

Who is currently on the Muhlenberg Board?

Was the Muhlenberg Board legally constituted when

control of Muhlenberg was turned over to Solaris/JFK Healthcare System?

Did Solaris/JFK have the legal standing to apply to close Muhlenberg?

Any actions taken after there was no longer a legally constituted Muhlenberg Hospital Board,
with properly documented meetings and votes can not be considered legal and binding.

A timely cy pres proceeding could have preserved more of Muhlenberg's mission and kept a
medically under-served community from deteriorating into a healthcare desert.

Insurance Companies advertised Muhlenberg as a full service Acute Care Hospital until 2012
and visits to the Satellite Emergency Room are billed at the hospital rate. Plainfield officials refer
to the SED as acute care. When it was introduced as being for bumps and bruises. Despite
opposition from concerned citizens, the Plainfield Planning Board approved retaining the H
signs along roadways that show the way to a hospital. Cardiac, stroke patients and women in
labor are still taken to Muhlenberg by private citizens that dont realize the hospital has been
closed and no longer provides acute care.

Media misrepresentation of the reason for losing health care coincided with as series of brutal
beatings and murders of Hispanics. While Plainfield' people were publicized as being the
problem, Solaris admitted to the State Health Planning Board that if they didn't close
Muhlenberg, they would go bankrupt. Citizens interpreted this as the burden of the poor, but
was really the need for A HAPT bond that would allow them to roll over in excess of 135 million
dollars in debt onto the Plainfield property was supposed to be maintained.
Stewardship of the cherished Muhlenberg assets has been abysmal. Muhlenberg was closed for
an unsubstantiated loss of 18 million dollars and a decade later we are still re purposing
millions. An actual merger between JFK and Hackensack Meridian has raised serious questions
about the legal implications of a merger that didn't exist. Numerous newspaper articles referred
to the merger and declared Solaris/JFK the owner of Muhlenberg. This media campaign also
represented that the hospital was closed because of deficiencies in Charity Care and the impact
of the immigrants and the uninsured.

When giving testimony under oath for the first time, Muhlenberg representatives applying to
the Plainfield Planning Board, for changes to a subdivision, answered the question of who
owned the property.

Muhlenberg owns the property, the Anthony Yelencsics Community Hospital AKA JFK Hospital is
the tenantthe two boards have been combined.

Recently, the language has been changed to joined together. If there was no merger, debt
from a tenant and unrelated corporate entities have been rolled over onto the Muhlenberg
property that has been devalued and no longer represent reasonable collateral for the debt.
Terms of the bond state that nothing is to be removed from the property, but the building has
been emptied. It also insists on maintenance but the roof has been allowed to leak, pipes burst
and the facility has been used to train State Police Dogs and make movies that include
destruction of property.

The public deserves a thorough accounting of the Muhlenberg Assets and who has legal
authority to control their use. Requests to the Attorney General for an accounting of impacted
assets are outstanding.

A better precedent for examining donor intent is the Lapsley Medical School Scholarships. There
is a story behind many of the funds that were donated after the Civil Unrest in Plainfield. The re
purposing of these funds has historic and social justice implications. Scholarships are of great
value and public interest. Under what conditions is public notice required? Who makes that
determination? Efforts to obtain a transcript of the proceeding were unsuccessful. There is no
argument that the Lapsley can no longer be utilized for its original purpose under the
stewardship of a variety of institutions, including the Plainfield Public Schools.
The Strategic Negligence, the clerical errors, the mistakes that have engineered a healthcare
desert have also given us too little time to prepare a response that reflects the serious
implications of the pending merger between JFK and Hackensack Meridian.

There are good reasons to delay this proceeding until matters currently before the Federal Trade
Commission and the New Jersey Attorney General are resolved.

There appear to be numerous conflicts of interest and ongoing failures to follow the law. I would
like more time to make an argument worthy of these concerns. The level of misrepresentations
may constitute fraud and warrant further proofs by the organizations seeking to liquidate the
donations, scholarships and real estate value of this civil institution.

On behalf of the public interest, I reserve the right to further address previously and currently
submitted documentation and to add and submit any document, if any documentary evidence
should become known after the time of the submission of this response.

cc: Frank R Ciesla

Giordano, Halloran and Ciesla

Office of the Attorney General

Attention: Jay Ganzman

Vernita E. Sias-Hill, Esq.

Corporation Counsel

City of Plainfield

Kelli Christainsen
PNC Wealth Management

Nancy Piwowar

The Muhlenberg Research Group