Politics at NUMC

  

Kevin Thomas

Taylor Darling

 Long Island Democrats are aghast -- Aghast! --  that appointments to the board of the Nassau County Medical Center are political.

State Sen. Kevin Thomas (D-Levittown) and Assemb. Taylor Darling (D-Hempstead) have sponsored  legislation to switch control of the East Meadow hospital from the county to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state, saying they want to "depoliticize" its operations.

Thomas told ABCnews yesterday that Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman's appointment of "his top Republican donor as chairman clearly shows this was done for a political reason."

Thomas and Darling are Nassau's version of French police commander Louis Renault, who was  "shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" in the movie Casablanca..

Where have these guys been? When haven't politics been involved in appointment of members and chairman of the medical center board,  regardless of which political party is in the county executive's office?

Nassau Democrats seem appalled that Blakeman's choice, Matthew Bruderman, a wealthy Centre Island investor and entreprenuer, is a major fundraiser for Republicans and has no hospital management experience.

Newsday reported that Bruderman donated $200,000 to the Nassau Republican Committee in 2021 and $10,000 to Blakeman's county executive campaign last year.  Bruderman wasn't Blakeman's "top donor."  He wasn't even among Blakeman's top five.

But Democrats didn't complain when Democratic County Executive Laura Curran, as soon as she took office in Jan. 2018, appointed a major Democratic party donor George Tsunis, who also had been a member of her transition team, as chairman of public benefit corporation dubbed NuHealth that runs the medical facilities.

Tsunis was not a health care executive. He was president of president and CEO of Chartwell Hotels.

He donated nearly $1 million to former Democratic President Barack Obama in an unsuccessful bid in 2014 to become ambassador to Norway and was recently appointed by Democrat President Joe Biden to be ambassador to Greece.

Though Tsunis did not give directly to Curran, state election records show he donated $105,000 to former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and $106,400 to the Nassau Democratic party from 2016 through 2020.

Just as Curran denied any political motives when she appointed Tsunis, Blakeman said at a news conference Monday that he did not choose Bruderman for his political contributions.

"I had to beg him to take the job," Blakeman said. "I needed someone of his stature to lead this organization. Someone who didn’t come from a political machine, who had no business interests with the hospital...Somebody who was completely independent, who would report to me what needed to be done and not just tell me what I wanted to hear." 

Bruce Blakeman (at lectern) and Matthew Brudemen (right) at NUMC

"You know what? That ruffled a lot of feathers," Blakeman added. "It's made a lot of people uncomfortable."

That's an understatement.  Newsday has twice quoted Bruderman telling NUMC trustees in a board meeting that he would "mow you down" if they stood in his way.

"I am taking a personal risk because they're going to attack me on behalf of what I'm doing here, " Bruderman told the crowd of NUMC employees who attended the news conference. "I am doing this for everyone here. For every job and every person. I understand there are almost 4,000 jobs here."

He added, "Accept my apology for any stupid thing I say. I am not a politician. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. But I sure as shit am going to fix this hospital." 

Bruderman would replace Curran's second appointee as NUMC chairman, Ed Farbenblum, who manages a wide nursing home network.

Farbenblum also is a Democratic donor, though not as generous as Tsunis.

State records show he has given $5,500 to Hochul since she automatically became governor when Cuomo resigned last August; $5,000 to Nassau Democrats in 2019, $10,000 to the failed bid of Democrat Ryan Cronin to become county comptroller last year, and $5,000 to State Sen. Todd Kaminsky's senate campaign.

All NuHealth chairmen have had political ties, each reflecting the party of the county executive in charge at the time.

Former Democratic County Executive Thomas Suozzi, now a Congressman who is challenging Hochul in the Democratic primary for governor,  in 2006 appointed Art Gianelli, his deputy for finance, to run the hospital. His wife was counsel to the Democratic majority on the county legislature at the time.

Gianelli was considered a financial ace, but his experience was in Democratic government administration, not in hospital management.

None of the past chairman pledged, as Bruderman did yesterday, to gift NUMC with $1.5 million of his own money.

Even the transfer in 1999 of the hospital, then called the Nassau County Medical Center,  to a public benefit corporation was basically a political gimmick.

The then-Republican-controlled county legislature, led by Blakeman, was looking for money to fill the county's yawning budget deficit , so it "sold" the medical center to the newly created Nassau Health Care Corporation for $82 million and backed the bonds.

So Nassau basically borrowed through a middle-man to create upfront revenues for itself -- a not uncommon tactic by fiscally shaky governments.

The county in 1999 also agreed to continue to service $50 million in existing hospital debt, promised $23.5 million in capital improvements and consented to subsidize the hospital by $127.5 million over 25 years, paying $90 million in the first five years.*

Thomas and Darling also say they want to end the "corruption and cronyism" that they say occurred under Mangano, but the medical center always seems to have been on the brink of financial collapse. And just last week, the center's former payroll director was arrested for allegedly embezzling more than $121,000 from the facility during Curran's tenure. 

Bruderman said yesterday that he had found that NuHealth hadn't billed the county for millions of dollars in services since August.  Blakeman gave him a check for $12.7 million, but didn't say what services the money covered.

There's another important detail that Thomas and Darling don't seem to have considered.

Although NuHealth has paid down its longterm debt to about $157 million, its remaining bonds are still outstanding.

Usually, as soon as any condition of a bond offering changes -- such as the proposed switch in administrative control of the hospital -- the issuing bank or financial institution can call the bond; ie NuHealth would have to immediately repay the debt.

Blakeman has said the county will not pay off the bonds, telling Newsday, "If this legislation changes the control structure of NUMC, then the county will take immediate action to relieve itself of the guarantee of the underlying bonds."

Unless the state is willing to cough up the $157 million, that could close the hospital.

*Financing details for the 1999 sale have been corrected and updated.