Last September, Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish nominated Bernie Moreno, a wealthy luxury car salesman who moonlights as a tech entrepreneur, to the Board of Trustees for MetroHealth, the county’s public hospital system. Mr. Moreno is slated to serve on the Board through 2025, but he has no business on the Board of our public hospital, and it’s time for Cuyahoga County to remove him from this post.

Bizarrely, Mr. Moreno did not bother to show up to his confirmation hearing before Cuyahoga County Council, which is standard practice. Instead, County Council agreed to dispense with normal order to rush Mr. Moreno’s confirmation.

While it makes sense that Metro would like to have its Board at full strength ahead of this meeting and Board retreat, it remains unclear why it was so essential to get Mr. Moreno on the Board that the County would throw its normal rules out the window. What unique skill set did Mr. Moreno bring to the table that necessitated giving him special treatment? In the six Board of Trustees meetings that have happened since his appointment, Mr. Moreno does not appear to have played much, if any, active role. His name appears nowhere in any of the minutes outside of the attendees.

To say that his application for the position is thin would be an understatement. Mr. Moreno describes his qualifications as including believing in the region and the hospital’s mission, supporting Metro’s push for a living wage, participating in Cleveland Chain Reaction, and organizing BlockLand, a quixotic effort to turn Cleveland into a capital of the largely theoretical blockchain technology. As to what professional experience he would bring to bear, Mr. Moreno called himself a businessman who “can lend an important business perspective” to Metro. Why MetroHealth desperately needed a fifth businessman on its 10-person Board never seems to have come up.

Given that we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed more than 170,000 Americans (as of the time this petition was written), MetroHealth’s importance to this community has perhaps never been more salient. Unfortunately, Mr. Moreno seems to be undermining the institution he is supposed to oversee at every turn. On March 23, he tweeted that “planes/cars crash every year and kill people; are we banning planes/cars next.” This foolish and offensive comment generated controversy, forcing both Metro and Mr. Moreno to issue statements. For his part, Mr. Moreno tweeted, “Bottom line ... I take full responsibility for the tweet that I have since deleted. In hindsight, it absolutely did not show my intended thoughts. For that, I deserve the criticism I am getting.”

If that was the end of it, it would be one thing. But Mr. Moreno continues to publicly spout COVID-19 skeptic talking points and amplify the voices of some of the most dangerous members of this conspiratorial ecosystem. He has retweeted notorious COVID denier Alex Berenson and shared Brit Hume’s tweet that called shutdowns “the worst public policy decision of our times.” He echoed noxious right wing demagogue Ben Shapiro, mocking people for wanting to remain safe until we develop a vaccine. He has said that “Not going to a bar or restaurant is LESS effective than following proper hygiene” and “Packing a bar with lots of hygienic people is better than a sparsely occupied bar with gross people!”

On June 19, as cases were beginning to spike to unseen levels in Florida (his second home and the state where he was flying when he sent the March 23 tweet), Mr. Moreno stated that Governor Ron DeSantis was “doing a very good job.” Since that date, nearly 490,000 Floridians have tested positive for the virus, and almost 6,500 have died. One week later, shortly before the country experienced a massive surge in cases, likely due to gatherings around the 4th of July holiday, Mr. Moreno argued that “I would guess most cases are *not* coming from public interactions, but rather from people getting together in their own homes.”

He has routinely attacked the media, including CNN and CBS, for what he calls “panic porn.” He seemed to insinuate that the virus is no big deal as long as we don’t count the deaths of elderly people in nursing homes. He bashed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, as a hypocrite more concerned about notoriety than science or public health.

Over the weekend, he demonstrated that he learned nothing from the controversy he sparked in March, tweeting that “Lockdowns have consequences. It’s time to move on with our lives, understand we manage risk every single day, and help protect the vulnerable.” This sentiment, which is virtually indistinguishable from the tweet he apologized for, is part of his ongoing campaign to force schools to open in-person.

It is abundantly clear that Mr. Moreno has not learned his lesson and that he is incapable of doing so. When a person called for people to contact MetroHealth’s CEO about his comments, Mr. Moreno bragged that the CEO works for him, not the other way around, and that he will not stop his dangerous, irresponsible crusade against public health measures.

Cuyahoga County’s public hospital system should not have a person on its Board like Mr. Moreno, who shows a callous disregard for public health and who routinely undermines the information coming from hospitals like Metro. Taxpayers should not have to put our faith in a businessman who can buy his way into this position so that he can throw around racist tropes like “Which virus that clearly originated in #China is worse for the long term future of #america? SARS-COV-2 or Attack on free speech?”

Mr. Moreno does not believe that the government should be responsible for the provision of healthcare, and we believe he shouldn’t play a role in it either. He has no business serving out his term on the MetroHealth Board of Trustees. We call on County Executive Armond Budish and Cuyahoga County Council to invoke their authority under §339.02(H) of the Ohio Revised Code to remove Mr. Moreno from the Board of Trustees for “neglect of duty, misconduct, or malfeasance in office.” His actions clearly reach the level of misconduct and harm the institution he is supposed to oversee. Wealthy businessmen like Mr. Moreno should not be able to buy impunity through campaign contributions and institutional gifts, especially when their words present a clear threat to public health during a global pandemic.