Court Opinion

ID: 9521704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:10:17.151497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:30.516568
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: I dissent for the reasons stated by the appellate court as well as the reasons stated in my dissent in Board of Education v. Chicago Teachers Union, Local 1 (1981), 88 Ill. 2d 63, and add the following. The Health and Hospitals Governing Commission, in agreeing to bargain with the unions, did not surrender its discretion to set the terms of employment. No terms would become effective until the Commission approved them, and the Commission did not have to agree to anything not to its satisfaction. If bargaining broke down, the Commission was free to do as it pleased. There was no more delegation of a public duty (here the Commission’s duty to exercise discretion to set the terms of employment) than there was in the recent case of Metropolitan Sanitary District v. Village of Romeoville (1981), 86 Ill. 2d 213. There, this court upheld a contract by which the sanitary district promised to perform Romeoville’s legal duty to maintain a bridge. One way for Romeoville to discharge that duty was to have the sanitary district do it for them. If the sanitary district failed to maintain the bridge properly, Romeoville would have to do so itself; the contract did not absolve it of its duty to the public to maintain the bridge; but it was a proper way of arranging a method by which that duty would be fulfilled. Likewise, the hospitals commission’s contracts did not divest it of its duty or ability to exercise discretion, but simply established a procedure, collective bargaining, for the preliminary task of generating a proposal. Littleton Education Association v. Arapahoe County School District, No. 6 (1976), 191 Colo. 411, 553 P.2d 793. The County Hospitals Governing Commission Act provided: “The Commission oeo may contract with one or more responsible public or non-profit corporations, hospitals, or health care facilities * * ° for the operation of any hospital and for the provision of any 000 health 600 services which the county eoe may be required or authorized by law to provide, and the Commission may contract for any other service for the convenience of its operations as it may deem advisable.” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1977, ch. 34, par. 5022.) In view of this statutory invitation for the Commission to farm out practically all its functions, I believe the undertaking in the contract to bargain collectively with hospital employees, with the Commission retaining ultimate discretion and control, was within the Commission’s power and not against public policy. The contract was valid, and the county board, as successor to the hospitals commission, is bound by it under the County Hospitals Act of 1979, which provided a clear transfer of “[a]ll rights, duties and obligations” of the Commission to the Board (Ill. Rev. Stat., 1980 Supp., ch. 34, par. 5020).