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    Energy commission stacked with Trump appointees is shielding a big political donor

    Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory
    October 28, 2019

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Utility crews cut tree limbs off power lines as an ambulance drives by in the rain and wind from Hurricane Hermine in Tallahassee, Florida. REUTERS/Phil Sears

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory

    A federal commission stacked with Trump appointees said the organization that runs our nation’s largest wholesale electricity market may keep secret how it spends millions of Americans' utility-bill dollars on lobbying and political contributions.


    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, ostensibly independent, slapped down a complaint by a watchdog group known as Public Citizen. The watchdog wanted PJM Interconnection to disclose spending.

    “We will not require PJM to itemize and disclose all political-related spending and deny the complaint on this issue,” commissioners wrote.

    PJM gave at least $456,500 to the Democratic Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association from October 2007 to August 2017, according to Public Citizen's complaint.

    Such donations, said Public Citizen, are “the wild, wild West of campaign finance” because they aren’t limited by state or federal rules and can be used to funnel large amounts of money to candidates for office.

    The Trump-dominated commission dubbed the money “membership fees” that let PJM maintain “access to these organizations to keep informed on policy initiatives impacting the wholesale markets and to help educate state policymakers.”

    Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen said FERC has signaled with this decision that it thinks the commission has no jurisdiction over many internal actions of organizations like PJM that are formed with the commission’s approval to monitor our nation’s electrical system.

    FERC has legally signaled the organizations are Frankensteins, monsters they created but no longer control, Slocum said.

    PJM is funded by payments tens of millions of Americans make through monthly utility bills in the District of Columbia and 13 states where PJM operates, including Illinois, Virginia, New Jersey and Ohio. People who pay electricity bills have no control over how PJM or other utilities that make pay-to-play contributions are spending the money.

    “If this was a county official or the mayor of a town, there would be outrage,” Slocum said.

    The case was decided by Chairman Neil Chatterjee, a Republican, and commissioners Richard Glick, a Democrat, and Bernard McNamee, a Republican. All three are Trump appointees. The commission has two vacancies. Trump recently nominated James Danly, another Republican, who is the general counsel for the commission.

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

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    Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
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    Survey: Will Melania leave Trump now that he's out of office ?

    The FBI, terrorism and the progressive left: This is a job for Kamala Harris

    Iveta Cherneva, Salon
    January 27, 2021

    As Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took their oaths of office last week, it was revealed that FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich will be retiring soon. Paul Abbate, the FBI No. 3, will be promoted from associate deputy director to Bowdich's post.

    At least for the moment, Joe Biden has left Christopher Wray as FBI chief — partly in deference to the bureau's supposed independence, and also because on the face of it Wray doesn't look like a Trump guy. Both before and after the election, Donald Trump was said many times to be on the verge of firing Wray. But that was only because the FBI director did not yield to the outgoing president's most extreme, extravagant and baseless requests — such as indicting Barack Obama and Biden over absolutely nothing — and doesn't mean Wray should stay on.

    Bowdich's early retirement and departure is likely linked to the Capitol events and the perception of FBI inaction toward far-right terrorism, an issue I have raised in more general terms in a previous Salon article. A lapse as grievous as we saw on Jan. 6 is hardly due to incompetence at that level. We are most likely talking about bias.

    This is why, as a top priority, Vice President Harris should put her lawyer hat on once again and lead, together with Congress, a reform of the FBI legal standards on terrorism, as they are applied to the progressive left and the far right.

    The Capitol attack was not an unpredictable, once-in-a-lifetime "black swan" event. It was part of a pattern. It's not like a meteor hit Washington out of nowhere. These right-wing groups are well known, and closely followed by the FBI.

    Ahead of the elections, FBI agents themselves competently and timely foiled the plot by far-right militias to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The FBI agents that did that did not need a publicly organized event that was all over the media and Twitter to tell them what might happen. This indicates that FBI agents and analysts in the field get it right — when the top leadership doesn't put the brakes on them, that is. The people who entered the Capitol had similar plans for any number of politicians and lawmakers. There is evidence appearing now through the courts that the Trump mob indeed intended to capture and assassinate members of Congress, as detailed in a recent court filing by federal prosecutors. The FBI knows these groups and their intentions.

    In a press conference several days after the events, FBI officials informed the public that they needed to differentiate between "keyboard bravado" and actual intentions. Keyboard bravado is the new "locker-room talk." The FBI gave terrorism practices and terrorism preparations par excellence the benefit of the doubt, but have a pronounced tendency to crack down on practices which are far away from terrorism when it comes to the progressive left.

    The FBI has traditionally been known for its repression of left or progressive activis,, as an Intercept article explores and as a new documentary film about the FBI's treatment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shows.

    In the spring of last year, when I was a candidate for the office of UN special rapporteur on freedom of speech, Bowdich was quoted, in a memo leaked to the New York Times, reacting to the nationwide wave of Black Lives Matters protests. Bowdich maintained that the protesters should be arrested under an outdated racketeering law from the 1940s. The leaked memo showed that Bowdich considered the social justice movement "a national crisis" comparable to 9/11. The hundreds of thousands of people mourning and marching across the country, unified by the simple concept that no life should be taken lightly, were seen by the FBI's deputy director as similar to terrorists or members of organized crime operations.

    To say that protesters who clash with the police are like terrorists is like saying that a car crash at the traffic light is a suicide bombing. Recently I wondered why Bowdich won't speak about 9/11 now, when we face the threat of actual far-right terrorism, including plans to blow up buildings and assassinate lawmakers.

    The FBI remains obsessed with dissident or radical voices on the left, while largely ignoring the violent extremists and the real terrorism threat on the far right, as recently revealed by an Intercept investigation that found "glaring disparities between law enforcement's depiction of groups on the right and the left."

    When it came to analysis of left-wing groups, "law enforcement intelligence was often vague, mixed up in online conspiracy theories or untethered to evidence of suspected criminal activity". When it comes to the right, on the other hand, the documents showed "law enforcement agencies across the country sharing detailed and specific information on the mobilization of armed groups looking to use the unrest as cover to attack law enforcement and protesters and set off a civil war."

    Harris, together with Congress, should lead a review and reform of the legal standards the FBI uses in opening terrorism investigations on progressives, Black activists, pro-bono lawyers, intellectuals and left-wing journalists, and review the standards for evidence of what constitutes suspicious criminal behavior, the thresholds for warrants, and other legal procedures. How easy is it to open terrorism investigations on progressives or leftists who have no prior criminal record and no suspicious criminal-group memberships?

    It is past time to get to the bottom of this. As recent events should make clear, the progressive left is not the national security enemy.

    Fueled by tips from family and friends, FBI ramps up arrests of Capitol rioters

    Salon
    January 27, 2021

    The FBI is showing no signs of slowing down in its pursuit of those involved in the Capitol riot earlier this month. From lawmakers to militia members to right-wing activists, those recently arrested run the gamut, but many have ties to both law enforcement and the military.

    Last week, the FBI reported that it has received over 200,000 digital tips from the public, many of which have been provided by friends, family, relatives, and coworkers of those involved. More than 200 cases have been opened and over 100 people have been apprehended in connection with the riot.

    "The American people have demonstrated that they will not allow mob violence to go unanswered," said Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen in a statement.

    On Monday, Brandon Straka, a right-wing activist who spoke at the "Stop the Steal" rally was arrested in Nebraska for impeding a police officer and disorderly conduct. He made national headlines last June after refusing to wear a mask on an American Airlines flight, citing an unspecified medical condition, after which he was permanently banned from the airline. Straka is the founder of the "#WalkAway" campaign which encouraged those on the left to "walk away" from the "divisive tenets endorsed...by the Democratic Party." CNN's David A. Love called the campaign "a psychological operation" that was "connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots" attempting to overstate the popularity of the moment.

    Two Virginia police officers Thomas Robertson and Jacob Fracker were also identified as rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol. After Robertson and Fracker told The Roanoke Times that they were ushered in by Capitol police and that their involvement was purely "a joke," the FBI later found that Robertson and Fracker evaded the police and had intent to harm members of Congress. According to an affidavit, Robertson told a friend that seeing Senators "cowering on the floor with genuine fear on their faces is the most American thing I've ever seen in my life." Fracker reportedly bragged to friends on social media that he had urinated on Nancy Pelosi's desk. Both officers are currently on unpaid leave.

    In Texas, Jackson Reffitt, 18, the son of Capital rioter Guy Reffitt, revealed his own father's involvement in the unrest to the FBI. According to Jackson, his father threatened him well in advance of the insurrection. "If you turn me in, you're a traitor," Guy told his son, "And you know what happens to traitors. Traitors get shot." Jackson nonetheless turned his father in, outing Guy as a member of the Three Percenters, a far-right militia group with a history of violence. In 2017, a Three Percenter was unsuccessfully attempted to detonate a car bomb in Oklahoma City. According to Jackson's affidavit, Guy brought a pistol with him to D.C.

    A small-town Ohio bar owner and veteran, Jessica Watkins, was accused of conspiring in the Capitol insurrection, along with her co-conspirators Donovan Crowl, a former Marine, and Thomas Caldwell, who served in the Navy. According to Watkins' boyfriend with whom she owns the Jolly Roger bar in Woodstock, Watkins was "not a violent person...She can be very spirited, but she is a very good person at heart and she just really wants to try to help people." Watkins is a member of the Oathkeepers, a far-right anti-government militia group that threatened to declare "civil war" if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was elected in 2016. Following the riot, Jessica Watkins told the Ohio Capital Journal, "To me, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw until we started hearing glass smash. That's when we knew things had gotten really bad."

    Former marine Michael Foy, who was caught on tape striking an officer ten times with a hockey stick, was arrested on January 21st. Foy received an honorable discharge from the military in 2019 and was given a "good conduct medal" after securing the rank of corporal. Foy's public defender Colleen Fitzharris argued that her client is suicidal and is struggling with mental health issues. "He didn't go to D.C. to cause violence," said Fitzharris, who alleges that Foy got caught up in "mob mentality." Foy was charged with four felonies and faces twenty years in prison, and was denied bond behind ahead of his hearing.

    On January 8th, federal prosecutors arrested a Trump supporter by the name of John Lolos, who was repeatedly yelling "Trump 2020" on a Delta flight that turned around due to the disturbance. After being kicked off the flight, Lolos was identified by a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority police officer. The officer had miraculously recognized Lolo after scrolling through his Instagram feed and seeing Lolo in the Capitol riot. "During the video Lolos can be seen exiting the U.S. Capitol doorway, wearing the same shirt he was wearing (at) the airport," said the airport police officer. He "was waving a red 'Trump 2020 Keep American Great' flag hooked together with the United States flag, yelling 'we did it, yeah!'"

    The FBI also apprehended the man who tweeted "Assassinate AOC" just before joining in on the violent storming of the Capitol. Garret Miller, 34, who posted the tweet in response to AOC's call for Trump's impeachment, explained over Facebook that "[he] just wanted to impeach himself a little bit lol. Garrett Miller later received five criminal charges following the insurrection after local law enforcement tipped off the FBI, making Miller's wish come true.


    #NEW: Video of Pert and Winn running out of the federal courthouse after facing charges in connection to… https://t.co/nAG2aasjpU
    — Ryan Nelson (@Ryan Nelson)1611700990.0

    'We're doomed': How the CARES Act forget America's most vulnerable hospitals

    Pro Publica
    January 27, 2021

    A federal economic relief package passed by Congress in March promised to provide a lifeline for hospitals, particularly those in rural communities where many facilities struggled to survive even before the coronavirus pandemic.

    But over the past 10 months, the distribution of more than $100 billion in CARES Act funding for health care providers has been plagued by a dizzying rollout and, at times, contradictory guidelines for how to use the funding.The result has been a patchwork of problems for rural hospitals, which were already at far greater risk of closure than other health care facilities and in dire need of help, The Frontier and ProPublica found. The scope of those problems is clearly visible in Oklahoma, which tied for the third-highest number of hospital closures in the country in the nine years before the pandemic.

    One hospital used more than $1 million in federal aid to pay off its years-old debt to a management company that left before Oklahoma's first coronavirus case was diagnosed, a potential violation of federal guidelines that could require the hospital to return the money, according to experts.

    Three Oklahoma hospitals that were purchased last year after filing for bankruptcy were unable to access more than $6 million in funds deposited by the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the rollout for health care providers. The money was instead deposited into accounts tied to the previous owners, leaving the new owners with few options as they tried to keep the facilities from becoming insolvent.

    And administrators at yet other hospitals have left millions in relief aid untouched, spiraling deeper into debt for fear that the wrong decision could force them to return money.

    “Every day we have new rules, new guidelines, and it's a struggle," said Shelly Dunham, CEO of Okeene Municipal Hospital in western Oklahoma. Dunham said she used only $50,000 of the $3 million the hospital received in April and May because of concerns that the facility would have to return the money. “I can't say we need more money right now. We just need to be able to keep what they've given us."

    Under the CARES Act, funding can be used to prevent, prepare for and respond to the coronavirus or to help with expenses or losses caused by COVID-19. The problem is in the details, which Congress left to HHS.

    HHS has primarily managed concerns by publicly releasing responses to more than 100 frequently asked questions. Those responses have sometimes contradicted previous guidance from the agency, leaving health care providers confused about how money can be used and what the agency would seek to claw back. The whipsawing guidance has covered a range of topics, including how health care providers could calculate losses from the pandemic and whether they could use the money to pay for long-term capital improvement projects such as new heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems.

    “Hospitals' challenge right now is keeping their doors open and paying their debts," said Carrie Cochran-McClain, vice president of government affairs and policy for the National Rural Health Association. “There is not enough flexibility to help providers really use the funds as Congress intended for the kinds of things that they need to address for COVID."

    Rural hospitals across Oklahoma and the country are disappearing at an alarming pace that could hasten without help from the federal government, Cochran-McClain said. In 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic, rural hospital closures reached a record high, with 18 nationwide. Texas led the country with three closures. Tennessee, Kansas and Oklahoma followed with two each.

    Last year, despite the infusion of federal funding, another 17 rural hospitals shuttered, bringing the total number of closures since 2005 to 176.

    Unlike larger, wealthier facilities, rural hospitals often have only a few weeks' worth of cash on hand to operate with. Experts have warned that even with the federal relief aid, many hospitals would struggle. But without it, they would surely fail.

    “There was a tussle between the desire early on to get funds out quickly into the hands of people and providers who need it first, and also a compelling need to have oversight of where the money is going," said James Cosgrove, health care director for the Government Accountability Office. After the first distribution of $50 billion in April, the GAO found that the federal government had sent $558,000 to four closed hospitals that either declined or returned the money.

    The Frontier and ProPublica found six other hospitals that closed in 2019 but received more than $3.2 million combined in federal relief payments. More than half of the money went to a hospital in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, that closed in December 2019 after state inspectors found unsafe conditions for patients.

    The relief money was being used for security and to respond to medical records requests until Ellwood City Medical Center could be sold, a bankruptcy trustee said in a December 2020 court filing. The trustee did not respond to requests for comment.

    An HHS official said the agency is “in the process of recovering payments'' from hospitals that permanently closed before Jan. 31, 2020, but would not say how much it was pursuing or identify any closed facilities that had received aid. Officials said they could not comment specifically on the six hospitals identified by The Frontier and ProPublica because the agency does not release information on individual facilities.

    The distribution of funding for health care providers is just one example of complications with the sweeping $2 trillion CARES Act. More than $174 billion in temporary tax breaks benefited mostly wealthy people and large companies. The Paycheck Protection Program, another effort aimed at helping small businesses stay afloat, drew widespread criticism after large companies, including the restaurant chains Ruth's Chris and Shake Shack, qualified for loans, while smaller struggling businesses were shut out. Ruth's Chris and Shake Shack later agreed to return the money.

    The hospital rescue program similarly helped wealthier facilities pad their bottom lines, while poorer hospitals struggled. In the first round of funding, wealthier hospitals received a larger share of the $50 billion than poor and rural hospitals, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization. The report found that those hospitals with a larger share of revenue coming from private insurers received about $44,000 per bed, while poor, rural hospitals got about half that amount.

    Subsequently, HHS set aside billions more for rural health care providers and for hospitals with a higher percentage of COVID-19 patients. But that wasn't enough to make up for the inequities, said Karyn Schwartz, a senior fellow for Kaiser.

    “I think they (HHS) were under a lot of pressure to do it quickly, and so they prioritized a quick and simple formula over really targeting the money towards the providers who might be most vulnerable," Schwartz said.

    HHS officials said they have repeatedly made improvements to the system in response to feedback from Congress and health care providers. The agency has changed the way it distributes money, seeking a formal application instead of releasing funding to all hospitals. A new $900 billion pandemic relief package passed in December also gave hospitals more flexibility in calculating revenue losses from the pandemic.

    “HHS has balanced the need for flexibility in use of funds to stabilize the health care system with program integrity requirements and the responsible use of taxpayer dollars," the agency said in a statement released before President Joe Biden took office.

    “We're Doomed"

    As rural communities across Oklahoma began experiencing an uptick in COVID-19 cases, the new owner of the only hospital in the small Oklahoma town of Prague fought for access to part of $3.2 million in federal relief aid.

    The Prague Community Hospital was one of three that in June asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Joseph Callaway to help them solve what appeared to be an intractable problem.

    The facilities, which included the Fairfax Community Hospital and the Haskell County Community Hospital, were among 11 that entered bankruptcy in 2019 amid accusations that the company that owned them, EmpowerHMS, had engaged in fraud. In a federal indictment unsealed in June, prosecutors accused the company's owner, Jorge Perez, and nine others of a scheme that allowed rural hospitals to bill at higher rates for blood and urine tests performed elsewhere. The case is set to go to trial in September 2021. Perez and eight other defendants have pleaded not guilty. A tenth defendant has not yet appeared in court.

    Each Oklahoma hospital owned by the company was auctioned off by a bankruptcy trustee in charge of settling financial debts incurred under EmpowerHMS.

    After unexpected revenue losses from the pandemic, the new owners banked on federal funding from the hospital relief package. But when the money was dispersed, they got nothing.

    HHS had instead deposited a total of $6.4 million into accounts connected to the hospitals' previous owners and managed by bankruptcy trustee Thomas Waldrep.

    Since federal rules prevented the money from being transferred, it had to be returned to HHS, Department of Justice attorney Michael Quinn said during a June bankruptcy court hearing.

    The new owners would have to wait for another round of relief, Quinn said. Even then, they may not qualify because the money was distributed using the hospitals' 2019 tax identification numbers and none of the current owners controlled the facilities at the time.

    “This is not specific to this case, this is a response to an enormous program of unprecedented size that rolled out billions of dollars on an emergency basis to provide relief and used estimated data to get the money out the door as fast as possible," Quinn said during the court hearing. “As soon as that happens though, that creates an expectation that, in some cases, the money will not go and land in the correct place. And here, it happened to land in the middle of a corporate sale of an asset."

    Waldrep, the bankruptcy trustee, later said in an interview that he believed the new owners should get a portion of the relief aid but he was hamstrung by the federal rules. The trustee also wanted to use a portion of the money to pay some of the hospitals' debts from before the sale, including his fee and charges from the management company that operated the facilities during the transition.

    “This puts our clients in a very bad position in terms of the continued delivery of care in these very critical needed areas," Hugh Robert, an attorney for Transcendental Union with Love and Spiritual Advancement, said during the hearing. The Tulsa-based nonprofit that purchased the Prague Community Hospital in May.

    Attorneys for the new owners of the three hospitals and for Waldrep asked the judge to allow them to use the money despite objections from the federal government. During the hearing, Callaway grew increasingly irritated at what he viewed as the federal government's failure to help the clearly struggling hospitals.

    The lack of guidance and flexibility from the federal government endangered hospitals instead of helping communities keep them open, Callaway said.

    “We don't do things like this around here," he said. “All I hear are reasons from the government of why it can't be done, instead of reasons why it can be done."

    The judge eventually allowed Waldrep to reach agreements with the hospitals. As part of the final plan, Waldrep could use about $750,000 to pay his fees and expenses for overseeing the bankruptcy cases. He would use another $1.4 million to pay Cohesive Healthcare Management and Consulting, which operated the hospitals in bankruptcy.

    Some of the money would also go to expenses that were incurred before the sale but were directly related to COVID-19.

    The Fairfax and Prague hospitals would each then receive a portion of the remaining $4 million. But because the federal government threatened to later take back money it determined was misused, the hospitals would have to obtain a line of credit that would protect the previous owner from any collection attempts.

    Dr. Vishal Aggarwal, who founded the nonprofit that purchased the Prague hospital, said he was never able to secure the financing that would serve as collateral because of the facility's poor financial state.

    “If a second wave hits us, we are doomed," Aggarwal said in an interview.

    Coming to Collect

    During the pandemic, hospitals were forced to forgo elective surgeries and other nonessential services that help drive the minimal revenue that rural facilities bring in annually. The losses, coupled with the added costs of preparing hospitals for the pandemic, heightened the urgency of obtaining federal relief.

    Some Oklahoma rural hospitals received federal relief aid before the coronavirus pandemic spread to their small towns and immediately began using the money without considering how expenses could later be justified.

    In May, Cimarron Memorial Hospital, in the Oklahoma Panhandle, was two weeks away from closing. It had fallen behind on state taxes and was working to settle a lawsuit filed months earlier by the electric company after the hospital failed to pay its several bills. It also owed $1.2 million in past-due fees to NewLight Healthcare, a management company that ran the hospital for nearly a decade before abruptly departing in January 2020.

    The hospital received $3.5 million in federal relief payments and loans.

    Tim Beard, Cimarron's chief executive officer, used nearly a third of the relief aid to pay off NewLight Healthcare, a decision that experts say could force the hospital to repay the federal government. HHS has called it “highly unusual" that the relief aid could be used for expenses incurred before Jan. 1, 2020.

    For nearly a decade, NewLight provided loans to the Cimarron hospital and deferred management fees, under a contract that allowed it to charge interest on the past-due amounts. The company then placed a lien on the hospital's incoming payments. If NewLight chose to enforce the lien, as it had already done in another Oklahoma town, the hospital would be required to pay the company before it paid employees or covered bills for medical supplies.

    Lee Hughes, an executive vice president for NewLight, declined an interview and did not respond to detailed written questions. In a statement, Hughes said that the company acted in good faith by settling for less than what it was owed.

    “NewLight did this both to resolve all past indebtedness owed by the hospital, but also as a gesture of good will," Hughes said.

    The hospital had run out of options to settle its debts, said Beard, adding that he believed there were no restrictions on the coronavirus relief money.

    “If I didn't do things as I should have then we will pay the price for that but we got the community taken care of for eight months longer than we were looking at," Beard said in an email.

    Hospitals will be required to start reporting how they spent the federal relief aid, but HHS officials said no deadline has been set. Those that received at least $750,000 must undergo audits that HHS will use to determine whether money must be returned.

    “I think there's probably many in the industry optimistic that the government doesn't want to recoup this money, and they're going to come up with a way to allow the hospitals to keep it," said Eric Shell, a rural hospital finance expert with the health care consulting firm Stroudwater Associates.

    By the time COVID-19 arrived in Cimarron County, the hospital had already used $2 million in federal funds. Aside from the payment to NewLight, Beard said he used $250,000 to replace the hospital's broken CT scanner, $81,000 to settle its debt to the electric company and another $750,000 to cover payroll and other bills.

    The hospital still has $1 million in provider relief funds, according to Beard, who did not provide detailed financial records requested by The Frontier and ProPublica. Beard said he hadn't compiled the information because it doesn't have to be reported to the federal government until this year.

    “If they take back the money or what we have in savings, we won't survive," Beard said in an email to The Frontier and ProPublica.

    Another Shot at Relief Funding

    Despite vastly different problems with the rollout of the federal program, hospital administrators share a fear that money they thought would save them could now accelerate their closure.

    This month, Dunham started using more of the $3 million she had been holding on to. The hospital, she said, needs the money. But Dunham said she hasn't stopped worrying about the crushing financial situation the hospital will face if the federal government disagrees with how the money is spent and asks for it to be returned.

    The Prague hospital has now changed hands. City officials who purchased the hospital this month for $1.3 million say they are not concerned about whether the government will claw back federal funds. Instead, they're worried about getting access to the money in the first place.

    The 25-bed hospital has been operating at or near capacity since Thanksgiving, when Oklahoma experienced a spike in COVID-19 cases that continues to grow. The city loaned the hospital $236,000 from its emergency reserves to pay employee salaries in November and December, according to city officials. And the hospital still needs to make various improvements, including replacing an antiquated system that supplies oxygen to patients.

    Prague's mayor, Cliff Bryant, acknowledged the risk the city took in buying the hospital, given the facility's history of financial problems and the additional pressures from the ongoing pandemic. But, he said, the move was necessary to ensure residents had access to quality health care.

    “It's either that or shut it down, so it's not a real good choice," Bryant said.

    Bryant said the city plans to apply for another round of relief money, probably early this year, but he worries about another denial. HHS has an estimated $24 billion left to allocate. The agency has not released details about which providers will qualify and how much they will receive.

    Meanwhile, the $1.7 million in relief money intended to help the Prague hospital weather the pandemic is still sitting in a bank account controlled by the bankruptcy trustee. He's unsure what will happen to the money.

    “I think one possibility is that it would just get sent back to the government," Waldrep said.

     
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