CoMoBUZ Insider Briefing, April 3, 2026

Mike's quick, weekly no-nonsense look at civic affairs in Columbia and Boone County, Missouri. This week it's an analysis of the break up at Boone Health between the hospital and its cardiologists, a final look at the race for the Ward 5 seat on the Columbia city council, the Columbia Public School's win in the long-running Wayne Sells/Rock Bridge naming rights lawsuit, a City of Columbia report on outsourcing, and Monday's Columbia City council meeting where the council will address data centers, airport projects and downtown security ambassadors. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Boone Health is confronting a rupture in one of its most important service lines while still under financial pressure, still searching for long-term strategic footing, and with a convoluted governance system that provides little accountability for Boone County citizens. From ComoBuzz.com, this is Como Buzz Insider Briefing, a weekly look at the decisions, documents, and debates shaping Columbia and Boone County. I'm Mike Murphy. Later in the episode, we'll look at a new city report showing Columbia's outsourcing bill dropped sharply after council members started asking questions about how much work was being sent outside city government. We'll also review that fifth ward Columbia City Council race and Columbia Public Schools legal victory in a long-running lawsuit over the naming rights of the Rockbridge High School football field. The biggest local public affairs story right now is not just that Boone Health is in court with its cardiology group. It's what that fight says about the condition of Boone Health itself. Boone Health has sued Missouri Cardiovascular Specialists, operating as Missouri Heart Center, to enforce a non-compete agreement and stop doctors from opening a competing practice in Columbia. The hospital is asking a judge to keep the group from building that competing operation through May 6th of next year to restore access to key data systems and to prevent outside-backed business deals from moving forward while the current agreements are still being unwound. On paper, that's a contract fight. In reality, it's much bigger than that. Because this is not some marginal service line, this is cardiology. This is one of the core specialties any full service hospital has to have. This is the kind of department that affects inpatient care, outpatient care, referral patterns, emergency response, follow-up care, revenue, reputation, and long-term stability. And Boone is not entering this fight from a position of strength. That's why this angle matters. Boone Health has been struggling to regain stable footing ever since it became independent from BJC health care in 2021. It's been working through operating losses, it's been searching for a strategic partner, it's been trying to prove that its post-BJC structure can actually stand on its own. And now, right in the middle of this, it's facing the loss of the cardiology group that has long been embedded in one of its most important service lines. This is not a dispute between administrators and doctors. It's a test of whether Boone Health can hold together a critical line of care while it's trying to figure out its own long-term future. Here's the setup. Missouri Cardiovascular Specialists, operating as Missouri Heart Center, has for years staffed inpatient and outpatient cardiology services at Boone Health in Columbia. But the relationship went beyond that. The group has handled management, oversight, billing, and collections for the hospital's cardiology line. That means Boone is not simply losing 16 members of a contracted physician group. It's losing the people who are deeply built into the clinical and administrative machinery of that specialty. The agreements at issue expire May 6th. Boone says the group sent a termination letter last November ending the agreements without cause effective on that date. Boone says it responded in January, confirming the date and reminding the group that the contracts contained non-compete provisions that Boone believes remain binding for one year after the agreements end. That one year period is central to the case. Boone wants the court to say those restrictions are valid through May 6, 2027. Boone says it then tried to work through transition issues. According to the hospital's account, it sought meetings about the cardiology service lines. It sought information about lease space, billing accounts, contracts, and the mechanics of unwinding a long relationship. Boone says those efforts did not get a meaningful response. Then the dispute got sharper. Boone says Missouri Heart's lawyers sent over a proposed amendment in late January that would carve out a transaction involving the Illinois-based investment and management company Heart and Vascular Partners from the agreement's change of control provisions. Boone rejected that. Boone also says it began requesting transition information and patient data and was not getting it. By March, according to Boone, it became increasingly clear that the cardiology group was moving forward towards financial independence, outside backing, and a future that would include inpatient and outpatient cardiovascular services in Columbia outside of Boone's system. Boone says that would violate the non-compete. The hospital's public framing has been blunt. CEO Brady Dubois said this is about alignment with outside capital instead of the community hospital. He said the move was being driven by what he called a small select group of physician partners at Missouri Heart. Boone has cast the split as a threat to continuity of care and as a direct challenge to the hospital's future. That gets us to one of the most sensitive pieces of this story, Dr. Jerry Kennett. Kennett is not just Columbia's most prominent cardiologist. He launched the cardiology program at Boone in 1981. He's a founding partner of Missouri Cardiovascular Specialists, and he's also the chairman of the Boone Health Board of Trustees. That overlap turns a contract dispute into a governance story. Kennett told Como Buzz.com that he broke from his partners on the issue when private equity discussions began. He said he stopped attending the group's meetings to avoid conflict, expressed his concerns individually, recused himself from voting involving Missouri cardiovascular specialists, and resigned from the Boone Health Operating Board before litigation was filed so he could focus on what he called the well-being of his patients. But even with those steps, the public issue does not disappear. Because Boone Health is a county hospital system with public roots and public accountability, its elected trustees exist because the citizens of Boone County own the hospital's assets. So when the chair of the elected trustees is also a founding member of the physician group the hospital is now suing, that raises fair questions. What conflict management steps were taken? When were they taken? How broad were they? Did recusal mean only votes or also discussions, negotiations, and strategy? And were those steps enough to preserve public confidence? Those are governance questions. They matter independently of who wins the lawsuit. Now there's another name in this story that matters, Heart and Vascular Partners. This is a Deerfield, Illinois-based management services organization that supports cardiology and vascular practices. In plain English, it's a business platform that provides operational and financial support to physician groups. Boone describes it as part of a private equity-backed physician practice model rather than a traditional medical group. That matters because Boone's public argument is not simply that doctors want to leave. Boone's allegations go even further. The lawsuit says Missouri Heart misused or disclosed Boone's confidential information, including proprietary billing rates and reimbursement data during due diligence for the planned new venture. Boone also alleges that the group stopped sharing critical billing and patient data, locked Boone out of a software system, and told its information systems director not to speak with Boone's staff. Boone says that threatened continuity of care and justified immediate court intervention. Those are allegations. They have not been proven, and Missouri Hart has publicly rejected Boone's portrayal of the conflict. The group said after the lawsuit was filed that it had tried for months to meet with Boone leadership and work toward a new collaborative agreement that would preserve and expand access to care. It said Boone refused to engage in a meaningful way and instead escalated with legal threats. Missouri Hart said Boone's allegations are legally and factually incorrect, and it said the group remains committed to patient care and open negotiation even while the case is pending. So there are now two competing public narratives. Boone says this is a breakaway effort that violates the contracts, threatens continuity of care, and puts outside business interests ahead of the community hospital. Missouri Heart says it tried to build a new collaborative model and Boone chose litigation. A judge will sort out the legal questions, but for the public, the broader meaning is already visible. This rupture is landing at a time when Boone Health is already under pressure. Since separating from BJC, Boone Health is yet to turn in operating profit. The hospital received a large cash cushion as part of the separation, but despite improvement, Boone still ended last year with a negative operating margin. Total operating losses since 2022 have totaled near $228 million. At the same time, Boone has been evaluating whether it needs a strategic partner. That process has been underway for months. It narrowed the field, it moved into diligence. Thousands of documents have reportedly been exchanged. That is not the posture of a hospital system that feels entirely settled. It's the posture of a system still trying to determine what its permanent structure needs to be. And now let's put that against the cardiology dispute. If you are Boone Health, you're trying to search for a long-term footing while also losing the doctor group that has been running a critical specialty service line both clinically and administratively. This is a serious operational challenge. Because even if Boone eventually wins in court, the practical problem does not disappear overnight. Hospitals don't just snap their fingers and create a full cardiology department from scratch. Recruiting specialists takes time, building systems takes time, transitioning records, billing, scheduling, and patient communication takes time. Establishing trust with patients takes time. Dubois said that Boone plans to hire a new cardiology team and expand services so heart patients continue to receive care. He said the thousands of patients that rely on Boone should rest assured the hospital will continue to provide the care it is known for throughout Mid-Missouri. That's the right public message, it has to be, but it's also a message that will now be tested in real time. The immediate legal question is whether Boone can stop the competing practice from taking shape before the current contracts fully expire and before the one-year non-compete period Boone claims is enforced by the court. The bigger public question is whether Boone can keep the cardiology line stable no matter how this shakes out. And then there's the political and civic layer. Boone is not just any private hospital in any random market. It has public accountability baked into its history and governance. That means citizens are entitled to ask not only what is happening, but how leadership handled the risk. Was this rupture foreseeable? How long had tension been building? When did Boone know the split was likely? What succession planning is underway? How much did the governance overlap complicate the response? Those are not side questions anymore. They're part of the story. There is a simple truth here that matters. In most hospital disputes, the public only notices when services are interrupted. But by the time the public notices, the real problems have usually been brewing for a long time behind the scenes. That may be the best way to understand this case. The lawsuit is not the beginning of the problem. The lawsuit is the point in which the problem became impossible to hide. What Boone is facing is not just a lawsuit over a noncompete. It's a collision between governance, physician alignment, outside capital, operating losses, strategic uncertainty, and continuity of care. That is why this is the lead story. And it's why the outcome matters beyond Boone Health itself. Because if Boone cannot stabilize core service lines while it's trying to define its future, then the larger question becomes unavoidable. What kind of hospital system is Boone going to be five years from now? Independent and stable? Independent but fragile? Or headed toward an outside relationship because the current model can't hold? This cardiology breakup does not answer those questions by itself, but it pushes it to the front. And for Boone County residents, especially patients and families who rely on Boone, that is the real significance. This is not just about doctors leaving. It's about whether the county hospital can keep itself together while one of its most important specialties is coming apart. You're listening to the Como Buzz Insider Briefing from Como Buzz.com. Let's go to the briefing board where there are two other developments that matter this week. The first is in the Fifth Ward City Council race, where the contrast between incumbent Don Waterman and Challenger Christina Hartman has become pretty clear heading into Tuesday's election. This race is not just about personalities. It's a clean policy split on public safety, taxes, infrastructure, and how City Hall should handle money. Waterman is running as the experienced incumbent. Hartman is running as the process and accountability challenger. When the two appeared separately on the Eagle Eye Drive at five, the differences were not subtle. Waterman emphasized public safety. He talked about police staffing. He talked about fire protection. He talked about speeding, neighborhood concerns, and unfinished capital needs. On the proposed additional one cent public safety sales tax, he supports it.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

This year we actually had to dip into reserves in order to be able to balance the budget. Fortunately, we had some we had reserves available beyond our mandatory 20% reserves. We had some reserves above that. So we were able to use that. If we attempt to grow the police department organically as our sales tax revenues grow, you know, we're looking at maybe three to five additional officers a year. Chief Levy said she needs anywhere between 50 and 60. Chief Schaefer said he needs 40 new firefighters. We have some capital things that need to be done. Three fire stations need to be rebuilt. There's issue with the police station, the main station downtown. That's at its end of life, so that's going to need to be either rehabbed or rebuilt or relocated. Equipment, cars, other equipment for the new officers and firefighters. This would let us generate, I think, current estimate between sales tax, direct sales tax, use tax, about 30 odd million dollars a year. So it would let us increase the forces and address some of these capital projects much more quickly.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Herman's posture is different. She's skeptical of the tax, or at least leaning against it.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I think uh right now a lot of citizens are hurting, and so for me, the the self-tax really needs to be examined. I'm leaning toward, I think we need to work on making sure that we're utilizing the budget we have rather than asking uh voters for additional money and funding. So I think it kind of comes back to the accountability of all this.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

That leads to her biggest issue in the ward, long-delayed infrastructure. She has pointed to projects that have dragged on for years, including the water tower and transmission line issues, and she argues the city's deepening problem is not necessarily lack of money, but how city government handles planning and delivery. That's a meaningful divide. Waterman says the city needs more resources to do more. Hartman says the city first needs to show it can manage better with what it already has. Housing exposed the same split in a different way. Waterman emphasized making it easier to build, streamline the process, reconsider fees, say yes when new housing is needed, even if some neighbors say no. Hartman framed housing is more layered, not just permitting, but affordability, infrastructure, capacity, and community acceptance. Her angle is less about faster approvals alone and more about whether the system as a whole is prepared for the housing growth people say they want. On spending cuts, again, the difference was not one candidate had a list and the other did not. Neither came with a dramatic ax, but their instincts were clearly different. Waterman's view is the budget has already been cut down hard and there's not much left to squeeze in any meaningful way.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

We've cut down the budget as much as I think that we can. Some of my constituents say, you know, we shouldn't be spending any of that. The report that we just got is we spent, I think it was 1.7 million, is what we're going to spend this year. Which in a $600 million budget is really not that significant. But yes, it's money spent. But again, we have to look at all of Columbia. I don't know that there's anything or any specific cuts that I can think of offhand that would significantly benefit the budget.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Hartman said the city needs to look harder at contracts, waste, and whether spending is actually producing results.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

We need to look at what that waste is and what contracts aren't serving the city and how we can start moving away from those contracts.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

That takes us to another important development in this race: outside help for Waterman. The National Association of Realtors purchased more than $23,000 in advertising to support his campaign. The spending covered digital ads, direct mail, and text messages during the final stretch of the race. Waterman said the support was probably related to his endorsement from the Columbia Board of Realtors. In the local campaign financing picture, Waterman also let in direct cash contributions for the reporting period. Hartman trailed him there. So what does that race look like now? It looks like a classic city election contrast. An incumbent arguing the city needs to spend more to address public safety and finish major projects. A challenger arguing the deeper problem is performance, accountability, and whether City Hall is making competent use of what it already has. That is a real choice. And because municipal turnout can be light, these races can turn on organization, visibility, and late messaging. Outside ad spending does not guarantee anything, but it can matter in a ward race, especially if it helps reinforce the incumbent's name and message during the last days before voting. We will know soon enough whether voters in the fifth ward want continuity or a systems-focused challenge. Now for the second item on the briefing board, a Boone County Circuit Judge has ruled for Columbia Public Schools against Wayne Sells in the long-running Rockbridge field dispute, effectively ending the case at the trial court level unless there's an appeal. The judgment itself was short, one page, no detailed explanation. The court denied the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and granted the district's motion. Each side will pay its own costs. What the ruling means in practical terms is simple. CPS 1 sells lost. The dispute goes back nearly two decades. In 2006, there was a $100,000 payment used to help fund synthetic turf at Rockbridge High School's football field. Sells and his company argued the payment came with an agreement for permanent naming rights. The district argued the payment was a donation, not a binding contract. For years, the field carried Sells' name. Then in 2020, the issue blew up after a social media controversy tied to Sells' Facebook comments about NFL players refusing to stand for the national anthem. Some district administrators and board members viewed those comments as objectionable. The signage came down in September of that year. After that, Sells tried to reach a compromise and asked that the field be instead named Veterans Memorial Field. The district declined. He then sought the return of his $100,000. The district refused, and the case moved into court. What made this particular moment important is that both sides had asked the judge to resolve the case without a trial. That is what summary judgment is about. You're telling the court that there are no material facts in dispute that need a jury or a trial judge to sort out. You're saying the case can be decided on law alone. That's exactly what happened here. The judgment says the parties agreed there were no material facts in dispute after arguments were heard, and the judge took the case under advisement before ruling. Now, because the order didn't explain the court's reasoning, we do not yet have a written roadmap of why the district prevailed, but the district's legal theory has been pretty straightforward. It argued that a public school district cannot be bound to any kind of unwritten long-term naming rights agreement the plaintiffs described. It argued that Missouri's law requires formal written contracts with public entities, and it argued that the plaintiffs were trying to build a perpetual naming rights deal out of a check, a plaque, and an alleged oral agreement. The plaintiff's theory was that naming rights had been promised in exchange for the payment, and that even if the court did not see an enforceable contract, the money was still tied to a condition the district later violated. The judge sided with CPS. That closes out a long-running and unusual local dispute that mixed donor recognition, public entity contract law, social media fallout, and political overtones. At the simplest level, the court has now said the school district wins and the plaintiffs do not recover. Whether the plaintiffs seek further review is the next question. But for now, the case that has simmered for years is over at the trial court level. You're listening to the Como Buzz Insider Briefing from Como Buzz.com. Now to the receipts. This week the document is a city staff report on outsourcing, and the reason it matters is not just the numbers in it, it's why the report exists at all. The report was prepared after council members raised questions about how much work the city was contracting out. This is the part that matters most because this was not staff spontaneously deciding to offer a broad public reflection on outsourced work. This came after elected officials started asking questions about the amount of outsourcing and more importantly, what kinds of work were being sent to outside vendors. The headline number is this. City staff says total outsourced service spending fell from about $50.4 million in fiscal year 2024 to about $42.1 million in fiscal year 2025. On its face, that sounds significant, and it probably is. The city's framing is this reflects a strategic pivot away from high-value one-time capital construction projects and toward a more sustainable model focused on infrastructure maintenance, tighter oversight, and community investment. That's the official frame. And some of the category shifts do support parts of that. Fleet service spending dropped sharply from about $3.8 million to about $1 million. Staff says that happened because the city changed how it handles repairs and mechanical work, moving away from fragmented repair orders at outside dealerships and toward a more consolidated service model with stronger internal oversight. So that's a real drop. If accurate, it suggests the city found a way to reduce reliance on outside vendors in at least one major operational area. But the report also shows something else. While some traditional service outsourcing fell, community support and sponsorship spending jumped dramatically. Staff says that category rose from about $450,000 to about $2.9 million. That's a five-fold increase. The city describes that as a deliberate community investment. The report says the money went towards social service grants, educational partnerships, economic development sponsorships, food security, housing assistance, and social equity initiatives. So here's the real question. When city government says outsourcing is down, what exactly does that mean? Because one answer is that contract spending for some outside services really did fall. Another answer is that the mix changed. Less in some forms of contracted work, more in other forms of outside spending. That is why the original council concerns matter. If elected officials were worried about how much work city government was sending outside or whether core functions were being outsourced too heavily, then a report showing a lower top line number is useful. But that does not end the inquiry. You still want to know what moved, where it moved, and why. The report also shows increases in public infrastructure, utility maintenance, and technology services. Staff ties those to sidewalks and curb repairs, ADA work, vegetation management, grid reliability, power plant service, cloud software, and operational data tracking. Again, that all sounds reasonable, but it reinforces the same point. This is not simply a story of outsourcing going down. It's a story of city spending priorities shifting across categories of outside work and outside support. And one more detail stands out. The report notes that this information had already been shared with council members by email on multiple dates before it landed in the formal April 6th council packet. That tells you the conversation has already been happening behind the scenes, and this packet is the public-facing version of a response to ongoing questions. That is why I would keep the focus here on accountability, not just arithmetic. The city wants credit for showing a decline, fair enough. But the public interest is in understanding what the city still outsources, what it no longer outsources, where outside spending is rising anyway, and whether council members are satisfied with the explanations they've gotten. The city is not asking for action on this report. It's informational only. Still, the fact that the staff had to assemble it tells you something. Questions about outsourcing have reached a level where elected officials want a clearer accounting. And that's something worth paying attention to. Because once council starts asking those questions, the next step is usually not just more information. The next step is whether anyone wants to change policy. Here's a few things I'll be watching at next week's Columbia City Council meeting. First, the airport package. The city has six airport projects moving together with a combined price tag of more than $13 million. They range from a boarding bridge to a parking expansion to terminal loop road work, airport drive reconstruction, a de-icing containment facility, and a new production kitchen for terminal concessions. Some of that work is heavily federally funded. Some relies on the city's half-cent transportation sales tax for local match or direct support. And that is the key issue to watch. The same transportation sales tax also supports transit operations, street and sidewalk maintenance, and other transportation needs around the city. Airport spending does not happen in a vacuum. It competes inside the same broader transportation funding structure. Second, the proposed data center restrictions. The council is set to consider whether to formally define data centers in city code and require case-by-case approval before they can be built. This is the city's first real zoning step toward handling a land use that has drawn growing attention nationally because of electricity use, water use, industrial land demand, and local control. The immediate issue is narrower than whether Columbia likes or dislikes data centers. The question is whether the city wants them formally defined and placed under conditional use review in industrial zoning rather than left floating in code ambiguity. That matters because it determines how much leverage the city and the public would have when the actual proposal shows up. And third, the downtown ambassador program. This is the proposed half a million dollar arrangement that would put unarmed private security and outreach workers downtown with the cost split between the city, the downtown CID, and the University of Missouri. Supporters describe it as supplemental public safety and outreach. Critics will naturally ask where the line is between hospitality, security, nuisance management, and homelessness policy. That one is worth watching closely because once these programs start, they often become a long-term fixture. The Boone Health Cardiology lawsuit is still, on one level, a contract case, but it's also a stress test. A stress test for Boone's governance, a stress test for its operating model, and a stress test for whether a hospital system is still trying to find stable footing can keep a core service line from breaking away. We'll keep following that. For more on these stories and the documents behind them, go to ComoBuzz.com. For Como Buzz.com, I'm Mike Murphy. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.