The battle for position no. 2 on Whidbey General Hospital’s Board of Commissioners is particularly contentious this election year, most notable for the circling of the wagons by the hospital establishment.

Rob Born, who is challenging incumbent Georgia Gardner, is decidedly the anti-establishment candidate. He’s the prickly thorn in the heel of the hospital board and administration. Born’s blog is highly critical of Whidbey General, and numerous requests he’s made under the Freedom of Information Act are a particular annoyance for hospital administrators.

Taxpayer-funded agencies are held to higher scrutiny, and taking slings and arrows is an unfortunate part of the job of any elected official. Politics isn’t for the weak of heart.

At the newspaper, nearly every one of our reporters who has covered the hospital has encountered resistance to requests for even the most basic information.

With a “mind-your-own-business” attitude disappointingly reminiscent of the Martha Rose-era of Island Transit, getting information from Whidbey General is like pulling teeth from a shark — you might get a tooth every once in a while, but you also may get bitten in the process.

When a taxpayer-funded agency treats requests for public information like an major nuisance, voters need to take notice.

Running public information requests past a lawyer, a frequent hospital practice, is a costly decision that cannot be pinned on the requestor who is exercising his or her rights.

According to state law, “each state and local agency shall appoint and publicly identify a public records officer whose responsibility is to serve as a point of contact for members of the public in requesting disclosure of public records and to oversee the agency’s compliance with the public records disclosure requirements of this chapter. A state or local agency’s public records officer may appoint an employee or official of another agency as its public records officer.”

In the race between Born and incumbent Georgia Gardner, hospital establishment unleashed the hounds on Born.

Sure, his criticisms haven’t always been fair and sometimes he misunderstands the facts. The Whidbey News-Times has also been a target of his attacks for not reporting as aggressively as he wanted. We realize that criticism can be painful.

But Born is the only candidate likely to ask tough questions of the administration and look at things from a different perspective.

Gardner and her supporters tout her accounting and legislative experience. She has said she doesn’t believe the hospital is unnecessarily secretive.

The hospital has a highly capable and experienced CEO in Geri Forbes, who recently selected a well-qualified chief financial officer to handle the financial well-being of Whidbey General. It stands to reason that the financial side is handled.

Whidbey General Hospital is a public hospital. Its reputation has suffered over the years, not because Born writes a critical blog, not because Born, the newspaper and others have sought public documents, and not because only negative news gets into the paper. The hospital has been its own worst enemy by fighting even positive coverage, fighting public records requests and trying to keep issues that taxpayers care about swept under the rug.

As a newspaper, one that believes in and espouses government transparency and accountability, we cannot endorse any candidate who doesn’t see or even acknowledge that it’s wrong to withhold public information and hold secret votes.

There are five commissioners serving on the board, and the notion that adding someone who isn’t a rubber stamp will be detrimental to the hospital district just doesn’t make sense.

The hospital board is elected to serve the public, not the other way around. There is no expectation, implied or otherwise, that administrators and board members must agree with — or that they even have to like — those you elect as their representatives.

Born may be an irritation for Whidbey General administrators, but we believe the public will benefit from having a voice on the hospital board who is not firmly entrenched in the current culture of complacency and non-transparency.