THE WORST CITY GOVERNMENT
Boo, Katherine
The Worst City Government You don’t have to be a big city government to waste money like one. Take the three-stoplight metropolis of Hightstown, New Jersey, for instance. In 1987,...
...On December 12, Mills was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he died of meningitis the following afternoon...
...A subsequent Sun investigation suggested the source of Bostick’s faith: In June 1989, the jail commissioner bought a $49,000 Mercedes-Benz with Dr...
...True, the modest city didn’t have on hand the $536,000 it needed to buy the vehicle-so it floated a bond, raising the cost by tens of thousands of dollars...
...There aren’t any...
...Instead, he recently sanctioned a $9,000 salary increase for Bostick...
...In the days before his death, he reportedly experienced massive bleeding and severe head and neck pain...
...In fact, he was suffering-make that dying - o f AIDS-related symptoms...
...Ample, says a fire department spokesman, for New York City, which averages about 12 fires an hour-what Hightstown, coincidentally, averages a year...
...Hunt...
...The high-finished ladder alone has garnered more than 500 trophies in fireman’s association competitions...
...But as Stanley C. Mills would tell you, if he had lived to tell you, it’s better than being sick at Baltimore City Jail...
...Medical records for prisoners were so chaotic, the grand jury complained, that it was impossible to tell how-or if-sick inmates were being treated...
...But that didn’t earn him the right to see a doctor...
...The Worst City Government You don’t have to be a big city government to waste money like one...
...The tallest building in Hightstown is 35 feet high...
...The mayor did, however, give PHS its pink slip, appointing a fresh set of physicians to the beleaguered city jail...
...It’s well worth the price to the members of Hightstown’s all-volunteer fire department: They are so proud of the bright red engine that they pilot it through parades all over New Jersey...
...In 1987, safetyconscious officials of the 4.200-resident town decided to purchase a singular, state-of-the-art fire truck whose ladder can reach blazes up to 135 feet in the air-one of the tallest firemobiles in the country, and one of the most expensive...
...Hunt for months, refusing to remove or transfer the doctor until the grand jury report forced her into action...
...At the time of Mills’s death, the jail’s medical services were provided under a multimillion dollar contract with Prison Health Services Inc...
...It’s dangerous enough to be sick these days at Baltimore’s public hospitals...
...NW Washington, DC 20009...
...Jerry B. Hunt...
...According to a stinging Baltimore grand jury report released last year, several of the jail‘s officials pleaded that Mills be seen by a doctor, but the jail’s medical director declined to see him for six days, saying the case was not a real emergency...
...In December 1988, Mills, imprisoned for stealing a pair of sweat socks from a downtown store, was diagnosed by prison doctors as suffering from a common cold...
...Please send your nominations to: Worst City Government The Washington Monthly 1611 Connecticut Ave...
...A few months later, the two were married...
...The new doctors immediately rushed nine sick prisoners to the hospital-including one who had been languishing in jail with an unhealed gunshot wound in his liver...
...She’s worth every bit of it, as far as I’m concerned,” he told reporters...
...Last fall’s grand jury report confirmed that Hunt failed to care properly for Mills-a misdeed one correctional official attributed to “a paperwork flow problem...
...Katherine Boo The Monthly depends on its readers to keep track of the breakdown of big-city government...
...It hasn’t, however, made any appearances at towering infernos...
...Although internal reports obtained by Baltimore’s Sun papers reveal that jail employees were complaining about Mills’s treatment less than 24 hours after his death, City Jail Commissioner Barbara Bostick remained a staunch defender of Dr...
...Mills’s “attending” physician was PHS’s medical director, Dr...
...An hour away in skyscraper-thick New York City, the tallest ladder extends only 107 feet...
...Which is just as well, since a former volunteer admits that most Hightstown firefighters are too scared to climb the ladder...
...Esteemed Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke has declined to investigate the cozy relationship between the doctor and his overseer...
Vol. 22 • September 1990 • No. 8
