Beaufort County Board of Commissioners’ vote in July to disband the board of the Beaufort Regional Health System Authority is the Washington Daily News’ Top 10 story of the year.

The hospital authority board was created when Vidant Health, then University Health Systems, took over the lease for Beaufort County Hospital in 2011 to become Vidant Beaufort Hospital. At the time, a trust fund was created to buffer the county from any outstanding liabilities. The trust fund, overseen by the hospital authority board, started at $6.8 million and now totals approximately $6.5 million. The board was able to negotiate its one known liability down to less than $400,000, according to board members.

But the remainder of the trust fund was the issue at stake, as the trust fund would change ownership from county money to hospital authority board money in 2016.

“Sept. 1, 2016 becomes a very important date. Unless the board (of commissioners) takes some type of action to address this issue, the money, the funds, would stay with Beaufort Regional Health System, and the residents of the county would actually lose that money,” Commissioner Ron Buzzeo said during the July meeting in which commissioners voted to dissolve the board.

If the hospital board took permanent oversight of the money on that date, it could conceivably be used to fund the reopening of a hospital in Belhaven, according to officials.

Commissioner Hood Richardson, who served on the hospital board, strongly objected to the dissolution of the board, saying that he believed commissioners would use the trust fund money for other purposes, though commissioners maintain the money would only be used for county health care.

“The $6.4 million can be used for anything the county wants to spend it on,” Richardson said in an August meeting. In a press release, Richardson said the $6.5 million trust fund, combined with what he believed would be an $11 million unencumbered surplus in the county general fund at the end of the 2015, would open the door to the loan-free construction of a new jail, a plan for which was shelved by commissioners in 2014.

Discussion, both inside and outside the county offices, led Commissioner Gary Brinn to write a column for the Daily News to dispel rumors about the Washington hospital and trust fund’s future.

“The dissolution of the outdated board is not going to cause the hospital in Washington to close. That is rhetoric being spread by a few obstructionists in our county. The (Beaufort County) Board of Commissioners is committed to our citizens and healthcare in our county,” Brinn wrote, going on to explain that the decision to dissolve the hospital board was to protect the trust fund.

“We simply could not allow that money to be used by one, or a few, to do so in any manner they chose without responsibility to the people. As elected officials we, the commission, are held accountable every four years at the ballot box. The people have the right to hold us responsible for the use of their money and that is how it should be,” Brinn wrote.

However, just a month after the Board of Commissioners dissolved the board, they were advised not to go through with just yet because of two outstanding liabilities—retirement obligations to employees, one of which has to be processed by the IRS. According to County Manager Brian Alligood, keeping the hospital board intact during the process would save the county money in the long run.

“The attorneys advised to not dissolve the board until IRS takes care of it,” Alligood said. “We certainly don’t want to cause a hiccup in anything they’re doing.”

In September, commissioners voted to replace hospital board members Richardson, Keith Kidwell and Roy Simpson, whose terms were were all expiring, and replaced them with commissioners Ron Buzzeo, Jerry Langley and Frankie Waters. Brinn said at the time that the board would be done away with and the responsibility of the trust would be moving into commissioners’ hands.

“We’re just going in another direction. We’re going to completely do away with the authority board in six months and we’re going to be overseeing the escrow account through the Board of Commissioners,” Brinn said.