Whidbey General Hospital paid lawyers a quarter-million dollars to deal with a doctor who publicly criticized the hospital and a citizen journalist who created a critical blog.

During 2012, the hospital paid a total of $554,393 in legal bills, according to public records obtained in response to a formal request by the Whidbey News-Times.

About half that amount stems from “issues surrounding Dr. (Mark) Borden and Rob Born,” said hospital spokeswoman Trish Rose.

That’s more than the hospital normally pays in legal fees, she said.

During 2013, the hospital spent $219,339 and, in 2014, spent $144,606 in legal fees. So far this year, the hospital racked up $525,490 in fees — about half of it to defend Chief Nursing Officer Linda Gipson against a gross-misdemeanor charge.

Gipson was found not guilty in Island County District Court last April.

“The most significant costs for 2015 were attributable to the county’s questionable decision to prosecute our CNO,” Rose said.

The hospital will likely be repaid under a state fund that reimburses attorney’s fees for people charged with assault who are found to have acted in self defense.

In total, since 2012, the hospital paid 19 different law firms and attorneys nearly $1.5 million.

“We use multiple firms to help us with a variety of legal issues,” Rose said.

“The district uses local counsel when appropriate.”

Many of the complex issues the hospital encounters require lawyers who specialize in areas such as health care finance, medical malpractice, land acquisition, labor negotiations and government rules, she said.

The hospital also paid attorneys to review documents requested by Borden and Born.

Born, a critic of the hospital in his blog, called “Whidbey General Reformers,” is running for a seat on the hospital board of directors.

Born started the blog after reading about Borden, the former emergency services director, who spoke up during hospital board meetings about problems he saw in the emergency room.

Borden claims he was forced out of his job.

The hospital declined to elaborate on why Borden was fired, but Rose said that “Dr. Borden’s behaviors led his employer (Team Health) to remove him from the hospital’s emergency room.”

The hospital also terminated Borden’s membership and clinical privileges following a hearing before a panel of medical staff and an appeal to the board.

“These hearings are similar to a trial and very time-consuming and costly,” Rose said.

So, too, were Born’s records requests, Rose said

Rose, however, said she could not say exactly how much of the quarter-million dollars was spent on reviewing those records requests.

“There was also a large amount of intertwined activities surrounding Dr. Borden, including multiple public records requests by Mr. Born,” she said. “These requests were very broad and while we attempted to work with Mr. Born to narrow his requests, we were rarely successful.”

“The search, gathering and identification of responsive and exempt documents and review by legal counsel resulted in increased legal spending.”

Born said he placed about 50 public records requests during 2011 and 2012.

He said he wanted to look at documents such as contracts, salary information and former CEO Tom Tom-asino’s calendar.

Born said he worked with the hospital to narrow the scope of his requests, even cancel part of them, if they proved too difficult to fill.

“I said on many occasions, ‘You don’t have to give that to me,’” he said.

Since then, Born made no public records requests — until this month, when he made six.

Whidbey General Hospital is part of a special district that receives taxpayer money.

The district is subject to the state Public Records Act, which holds that all local government records are available for review by the public except for a few specific exemptions spelled out by state law.

Born, who is an attorney, said he believes the hospital overuses lawyers and “can’t handle criticism.”

“It’s part of what I call ‘anti-transparency,’” he said. “They can’t handle having their scandals exposed.”

The hospital uses attorneys to “intimidate, harass and punish people,” Born said.

Dr. Borden said he isn’t surprised by the hospital’s legal bills, adding he spent $30,000 of his own money defending himself.

Attorneys, he said, are “extremely expensive and exceptionally useless.”