A note to Whidbey General Hospital Board: What were you thinking when you came up with the exorbitant salary you are proposing to give Thomas Tomasino in his new role as hospital CEO?

The proposed salary, as we have read, is considerably more than the CEO of Island Hospital who has been on the job for nine years and runs a hospital considerably larger than ours. Perhaps you have not noticed there is a health care crisis, but the rest of us have. At a time when hospitals all over the nation are closing their doors because they can’t afford to serve their communities and other hospitals are denying employees their yearly raises, you feel justified to offer a new CEO a salary that is equivalent to that of four to five full-time registered nurses. Our nation is up in arms about the excessive salaries paid to executives. Your responsibility as a board is to be a good steward of the taxpayers money not to reward the few at the expense of the many.

Carole Dawes

Coupeville