Legal counsel has been retained by the LMAS District Health Department as its first response to a notice that Mackinac County wants to split from the four-county agency. Meeting in Newberry Monday, December 7, the board of health hired Foster, Swift, Collins and Smith, a Michigan firm with an office in Marquette, to help it sort out the details of a break-up, but deferred the formation of a committee to take the matter any further until its new counsel has time for review.

Mackinac County notified the agency Monday after its board of com- missioners voted the day before to separate from Luce, Alger, and Schoolcraft counties, the other three counties encompassed by the district health department.

Dawn Nelson, who chairs both the Mackinac County Board of Commissioners and the LMAS District Health Department's Board of Health, emphasized Monday that the process is only exploratory at this time and that Mackinac County has no timetable in mind for a separation.

Mackinac County's board discussed its frustrations with LMAS at a special meeting with its attorney Sunday, December 6, in St. Ignace, and voted to investigate what the cost and other liabilities of a separation would entail.

The attorney, Dave Stoker of Cohl, Stoker Toskey and Mc- Glinchey, a law firm in Lansing, told the LMAS board Monday that Mackinac County is not comfortable with the management of the health department, nor is it comfortable with the financial and operational arrangements it shares with the other three counties.

"As I came out of that meeting," he said, "I was under the impression that the unanimous opinion of all of the Mackinac County board is that the citizens of Mackinac County would be better served in a different arrangement. The vote was to try to explore looking at a single county health department as the primary direction they would like to go."

Mr. Stoker has also been legal counsel to the LMAS Board of Health, a potential conflict of interest that prompted the board last month to seek new counsel, resulting in the hiring Monday of Foster, Swift, Collins and Smith.

The LMAS District Health Department is responsible for environmental health, such as restaurant, food, and well water safety, as well as personal and family health, such as preventative medicine, including immunizations. It is governed by two county commissioners from each of its four member counties. Mrs. Nelson and Commissioner Calvin "Bucky" McPhee hold Mackinac County's two seats.

Michigan health departments, Mr. Stoker said, are loosely organized under a short, two-paragraph statute that essentially says a board has two members from each county and operates under a formula that the state approves. In the case of the LMAS district, the formula is based on population, each county contributing on a per capita basis.

"That's about all," he noted, and, therefore, there is virtually no documented relationship between the department and the counties it serves. If Mackinac County is to leave the district, the health department and each of the other counties involved will have to sort through property and inventory, debts and other financial matters, personnel, and even customers and allocate these resources among the four parties.

Above all, he noted, the counties will want to ensure that the people served by the district health department will see a smooth transition and that nobody will fall through the cracks.

The statute also doesn't address how a county can separate from a district health department. A Michigan Attorney General opinion states that such action cannot be taken by the county, but must be taken by the board of health, which would "disband itself and then subsequently reorganize itself into a totally new district health department consisting of the other remaining counties."

Until that would happen, under the opinion, Mackinac County would not be able to receive state funding as a separate operation.

Whether that opinion, affirmed in 1995, still stands or has been superseded by the courts, he suggested that both a Mackinac County health department and the district health department organize under the Urban Cooperation Act, which would allow the organization to be documented, more like a charter, with shared responsibilities and other matters spelled out.

As for a LMAS committee to work with Mackinac County in exploring a split, Schoolcraft County representative George Ecclesine said he felt uncomfortable assembling a committee without having legal advice from its own counsel, and the board agreed to postponing such action.

Health Officer Nick Derusha agreed with the board's opinion, saying the new counsel may recommend appointing one representative from each of the remaining three counties on the committee or may want the entire board to be involved in the process.