One of the biggest critics of Whidbey General Hospital leadership is hoping to join the team.

Greenbank resident and blogger Rob Born announced his intention to run for a seat on the hospital board Tuesday.

He will run for the position 2 seat currently held by Coupeville resident Georgia Gardner.

Gardner said she does intend on running for reelection and welcomes a challenger.

“There’s something wrong when you run uncontested,” she said.

Her district encompasses Central Whidbey, roughly from Hastie Lake Road to Bush Point Road.

Nancy Fey, the current position 4 commissioner, said she intends to run. Nobody has announced plans to run against her; she represents a district that encompasses most of the City of Oak Harbor.

Fey points out that the hospital is in the midst of major changes, with the hospital expansion on the horizon and a new CEO.

“An interesting few years lie ahead,” she said.

Born said he will ask the tough questions that currently aren’t being asked.

He claims that the current board members are simply “rubber stamps” for the administration and that a dissenting vote hasn’t been cast since 2008.

“The question is whether I can accomplish anything,” he said, acknowledging that he would be just one of five votes.

“I know that I can do one thing, if nothing else. I can bring transparency to the hospital.”

Born said he, if elected, will encourage the hospital to make more information accessible to the public. If that doesn’t work, he said, he will make the information available on his website, WGH Blogger. Of course, he said, that won’t include information protected by privacy statutes.

Born said he will also encourage the board to discuss issues and make decisions in public.

“If you don’t have a transparent government, you will continue to make the mistakes that Whidbey General is making,” he said. “A lack of transparency is what allows bad government to continue.”

Born isn’t the first person to criticize the public hospital for a perception that it isn’t open or transparent with the community, but he’s probably been the most vocal over the years.

He first became interested in the inner-workings of the hospital after reading stories about the former emergency services director Mark Borden being forced out. He didn’t know Borden but felt the administration’s actions were cruel and unprofessional.

As a result, Born made himself into a gadfly in 2011. He started attending meetings, making public records requests and wrote the sometimes-scathing blog, whidbeygeneralreformers.org

He criticized the hospital on many fronts, from the alleged waste of taxpayers’ money to personnel issues.

One of his main concerns, he said, is the difficulty that the hospital has in retaining people, which he said is caused by the “poor working environment.”

He also criticized the local newspapers when he felt the newspaper wasn’t being tough enough in its coverage of the hospital district.

This year, Born re-launched the new website, www.wghblogger.com, which he hoped would become an interactive public forum on the hospital and health-care matters. He also writes about the hospital on a conservative North Whidbey website.

“If elected, I further promise citizens that I will work full-time-plus to impart common sense to the running of our precious, but troubled, public enterprise,” he said in a statement.

“Fellow Whidbey Islanders, you deserve and should expect no less.”