Censure of James Holsinger (81379-JA-NonDis)
Committee Vote:
For: 36 Against: 0 Not Voting: 1
Vote on Main Motion
This motion was Adopted, with 826 votes for and 38 votes against.
Here is the
full text of the petition:
Whereas, James W. Holsinger, MD, was elected to our church’s
Judicial Council in May, 2000, and has been president of the Judicial
Council since 2004, and
Whereas, the duties of the Judicial Council include
“determining the legality of any action taken by any body created by or
authorized by the General Conference” and the General Conference has
therefore recognized as a matter of critical importance that members of the
Judicial Council avoid conflicts of interest, as illustrated by the
prohibition on service on other boards and agencies of the church, and
Whereas, following election to the Judicial Council in
May 2000, Dr. Holsinger joined the board of trustees of the Good Samaritan
Foundation (GSF) of Lexington, Kentucky, in July 2000, knowing that GSF had,
three months earlier, in May 2000, become the subject of litigation by the
Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church, and
Whereas, two former members of the Judicial Council
who worked with Holsinger from 2000-2004, Sally C. Askew, Esq., and Sally B.
Geis, Ph.D., stated that Holsinger never mentioned having joined an
organization that was being sued by a constituent body of the United
Methodist Church, nor did he at any time address possible conflicts of
interest involved in being a member of the UMC’s Judicial Council while
engaged in significant litigation against the UMC, and
Whereas the essence of the lawsuit between the
Kentucky Annual Conference and the Good Samaritan Foundation related to
church property ownership issues, and the Court found there was an “express
trust” on behalf of the United Methodist Church, based on the surrounding
facts and circumstances, and safeguarding property trust being a central
duty for United Methodist leaders to protect, and a topic of Judicial
Council decisions, and
Whereas, the GSF trustees which Dr. Holsinger, member
and subsequently chair of the Judicial Council, joined, and of which he
became chair in 2003, were in violation of their fiduciary responsibilities
as trustees of United Methodist hospital property in the amount of $20
million realized from the sale in 1995 of 330 bed United Methodist Good
Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, to a for-profit corporation, and
which trustees refused to hand over the proceeds to the rightful owners, the
Kentucky Annual Conference (KAC) of the UMC, and
Whereas, according to court records, the foundation’s
trustees refused to tell the KAC what happened to the $20 million from the
sale of the UMC hospital for nearly five years and as late as June of 2006
the lay and clergy members of the KAC felt compelled to pass a resolution
formally seeking necessary “[i]nformation on assets, income earned, tax
issues…investment practices, conflicts of interest, and other information”
from the foundation, and
Whereas, despite his Judicial Council responsibilities
as one of the highest elected officials of the United Methodist Church, and
in apparent ignorance of Methodism’s commitment to building dozens of
hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to provide care for the
poor and indigent Dr. Holsinger in a letter to GSF grantees questioned the
motives and integrity of the UMC, publicly stating his belief that the UMC
was “only interested in the Foundation’s money, not its cause” [health care
for the poor and disadvantaged], and
Whereas, Dr. Holsinger was not a bystander in these
events, but the dominant personality among the trustees and the driving
force in the prolongation of the lawsuit, as evidenced by the lawsuit’s
rapid conclusion two weeks after Dr. Holsinger’s resignation from the
trustees in May, 2007, and
Whereas, during the period of this litigation, Dr.
Holsinger was affiliated with the University of Kentucky as Chancellor of
the Chandler Medical Center from 1994-2003, and the University of Kentucky’s
programs in medicine, nursing, dentistry and public health were awarded 63%
of $8,430,363 in grants awarded by GSF from July 1, 1997 through June 30,
2006 including the endowment of two academic chairs valued at a million
dollars each, despite GSF’s own policies that, “[major organizations” such
as “[h]ospitals, [c]olleges and [u]niversities are not eligible as a general
statement,” although exceptions could be made by the trustees, and
Whereas during the time Dr. Holsinger was chair of the
GSF truste