A US bankruptcy judge in Houston issued a ruling on Tuesday afternoon that clears the way for Steward Health Care to close Carney Hospital – and another Steward-owned facility in Nashoba Valley – by the end of this month.

There was no objection to Judge Christopher Lopez’s ruling from attorneys paid for by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who ostensibly represent us – the people of Dorchester – and who were sent to Texas by Gov. Healey and her appointed Health and Human Services chief, Kate Walsh. In fact, Lopez’s decision was accompanied by another ruling that approves a series of payments from the Commonwealth – roughly $30 million – to keep the Steward hospitals operational over the coming weeks.

Within three hours of Judge Lopez’s decision, the Healey administration began to circulate a public hearing notice of an in-person hearing on the Carney closure. The meeting, which will be held next Tuesday (Aug. 13) at 6 p.m. at Florian Hall, was also prescribed in the judge’s ruling, which authorized the closing of both Carney and Nashoba Valley “on a final basis,” but stipulated that the state’s Dept. of Public Health “may hold public hearings with respect to the closures…on or before” the end of August. There will also be a virtual, phone-in hearing held on Aug. 14 at 6 p.m.

Next week’s hearings will no doubt feature a range of testimony from elected officials heaping scorn on Steward’s executives, who absolutely deserve the ridicule and wrath that’s being hurled in their direction. As we’ve documented repeatedly, they have deliberately stripped Carney of resources over the last few years and set it up to fail. In our view, it was a deliberate act meant to undermine this specific facility in hopes that it would be less marketable to a new operator and, instead, could be liquidated as a real estate asset.

To her credit, Mayor Wu has thrown a wrench into the Steward plan by making it plain that whoever buys the 12-acre Carney campus will face a huge hurdle in any redevelopment scheme that follows.

But the Healey administration has sent a decidedly different message. The governor and Secretary Walsh have decided that it’s preferable that Carney and Nashoba – and the vulnerable communities they serve – perish so that six other hospitals – and their constituencies – have a shot at survival.

There’s no question that the governor and her team are in a very difficult position. As Steward teeters and ultimately fails, state government has become the key arbiter and broker of how to salvage what they can from the collapse and keep as many facilities online as possible. But, so far, they have offered no credible rationale for why Carney and Nashoba have been served up as sacrificial lambs in the process.

Walsh, who until 2023 served as the president and CEO of Boston Medical Center (BMC), is a seasoned health care executive who has been the key decision-maker in picking the winners and losers in the Steward matter. Walsh has said little about how Carney and Nashoba have been singled out for closure, other than to suggest: “The market has spoken.”

But Walsh, until very recently, was a big part of that market. Now, she is a state official who is charged with regulating the very same hospital group – BMC— that she once managed.

Next week’s hearing in Dorchester should not just be a gripe session about the evils of the Steward C-suite executives. State officials, including the governor and her chosen surrogates, owe this community a detailed explanation for why they’ve decided to walk away from the Carney and this community.