OAKLAND — Alameda County’s public hospital system revealed severe financial problems and asked the county government for help Monday, drawing a rebuke from county leaders who blamed irresponsible hospital administrators for jeopardizing the health care safety net.

“The Alameda Health System has proven to be inept at managing their finances,” said Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle, demanding leadership change at the consortium that runs a network of hospitals, including its flagship Highland Hospital in Oakland.

“The public has been in the dark about the financial system until now,” Valle said at a Monday hearing. “The trust between AHS and Alameda County has been broken.”

The usually mild-mannered supervisor unleashed a torrent of criticism after the hospital system’s newly hired chief financial officer, David Cox, candidly made a case for why the hospitals need help.

The health system is now asking to restructure a $198.7 million debt owed to the county, delaying its end date by as many as 20 years so that the hospitals can pay their mounting bills.

The loan amount was supposed to be reduced to $110 million by June and to $30 million by June 2018.

Among the problems is a malfunctioning electronic records system the hospital bought last year from Siemens Healthcare. Technological problems in processing claims have caused a cash-flow problem that Cox said in an interview is “$55 million higher than it should be — (money) that could be in the bank account that could be used to pay down this debt to the county. It’s quite significant.”

Although Valle never referred by name to Alameda Health System CEO Wright Lassiter III, the supervisor called for a “major change at the executive level” and for hospital leaders and board members to be held accountable.

The hospital system “has shown irresponsibility at all levels of their financial system, putting the public in jeopardy,” Valle said.

Lassiter was scheduled to address the Monday morning meeting of the supervisors’ health committee but had to leave town for a family emergency and could not be reached to respond to the criticism. Described on the AHS website as a “successful turnaround executive,” Lassiter has built a national reputation for fixing the troubled hospital system since he took the job in 2005.

But Valle and other elected supervisors have raised concerns in recent years over how well the hospital system is overseen by its board of trustees.

The hospital consortium has grown since the county’s original line of credit was established, recently taking over San Leandro Hospital and Alameda Hospital, but its revenue has not grown. Lassiter’s attempt to compete with big corporate hospital chains such as Kaiser and Sutter has proved a challenge.

Kirk Miller, the president of the hospital board, was not present Monday and did not return a request for comment. Only one of the 13 board members, Tracy Jensen, appeared at Monday’s hearing. Jensen is one of the board’s newest five members appointed by supervisors this month.

Formerly known as the Alameda County Medical System, the hospital network split off from the county and created its own separate authority in 1998 but continues to rely on the county government for funding. The county also owns hospital real estate and is constructing the $700 million replacement and expansion of Highland Hospital.

Its financial problems began emerging soon after Alameda County residents voted in June to extend for another 15 years a half-cent sales tax that funds the health care safety net. Three-quarters of the money — about $75 million a year — goes directly to the Alameda Health System.

Supervisor Wilma Chan said Monday that she is also concerned with the hospital finances but was more measured than Valle in her criticism, pointing out it is a “challenging time for the public sector under the Affordable Care Act,” the Obama administration’s new health care law that took effect in January.

Chan said the reforms “favor large providers with a lot of capital (and) those providers who have a very rich patient mix,” not safety net hospitals such as those run by the Alameda Health System.