How exactly California's Attorney General reasons that closed hospitals would serve the public's "health and safety" better than County-run hospitals with most but not all of their original services is unclear from his statements in this story.

I have to guess there is some subtext of payola to powerful labor unions, which have been so closely linked to recent Attorneys-General, played important roles in getting them elected, and have received rewards in return, always at public cost.

After all, Becerra's immediate predecessor Kamala Harris (who also set up the special conditions Becerra is now striving to retain) was famous for taking sides AGAINST the general public, in cases involving the public-employee unions she was indebted to for aiding her own election.

Harris sided against schoolchildren in favor of teachers' unions in a high-profile Los-Angeles case, and underhandedly sabotaged the statewide ballot proposition laumched by SJ's mayor for desperately needed reform of cushy public-employee union benefits (created by other state politicians under those unions' control). The time is long past when California Attorneys General could claim to defend the general public.