Parkland defends growing cost of new public hospital

In a battle of words Tuesday, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price accused Parkland Memorial Hospital of running "over budget" on the construction of a new public hospital. The exchange between Price and Louis Saksen, Parkland's senior vice president over new construction, boiled down to mainly semantics. Everyone seemed to agree that the $1.27 billion hospital replacement project will cost at least $54 million more than was originally budgeted. But was the hospital guilty of "scope creep," meaning the size of the project had grown? Or was the project running "over budget," meaning more was being spent on something that was basically the same size?