The new group established to oversee a consolidation of Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center should open its meetings to the public and include a county representative, County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said Tuesday.

The state intervened earlier this month in the deadlocked talks by naming a governing board of directors for a combined organization.

It includes three members each from ECMC, Kaleida and the University at Buffalo, as well as five members from the community. The new group gives UB, which trains many of the area’s doctors, an expanded role in the region’s health care.

“While I am pleased that progress is being made to resolve the contentious issue of merging ECMC with Kaleida Health, it is disappointing to see that the public is being shut out of these important discussions,” Poloncarz said.

He called for a county presence on the new board, arguing that the county provides tens of millions of dollars of subsidies to ECMC, a $101 million bond guarantee for the hospital’s debt and a large portion of the hospital’s retiree health costs.

The new group held its first meeting last week and is scheduled to meet today at UB, again in private.

“The board, which includes members of the community, appreciates the county’s perspective, and we absolutely feel that public input is essential to our success,” John Simpson, president of UB, said in a statement. “At this point, the board is undertaking the very preliminary steps of organizing itself, and we have been advised by the Department of Health that these preliminary meetings are not subject to open meeting law.”

“Going forward, we hope to have regular public input and perform our work as transparently as possible,” he said.

The state Health Department has said the group could close its meetings because it has not formed an entity subject to the open meetings law.

But last week, Robert Freeman, the leading expert on the state’s Freedom of Information Law, noted that the government appointed the board members and many come from government institutions.

For those reasons, he said he believes the board’s meetings should be open at least until it forms a not-forprofit corporation.

hdavis@buffnews.com