NUMC's in-house blitz against proposed change in state health law 

Daily Point

Employees asked to provide detailed testimony to be submitted to legislative panels

In advance of state legislative budget hearings, human resources executives at Nassau University Medical Center asked employees to provide testimony against proposed changes to a state law that could impact the hospital, sources in the building told The Point.

The conversations happened during the workday in the hospital building, a source confirmed.

The HR executives provided employees with a printed letter that offered space for the employees to fill out their names and included detailed testimony, noting it would be submitted to the State Senate Finance Committee and the State Assembly Ways & Means Committee for the Feb. 5 Mental Hygiene budget hearing and the Feb. 11 Health budget hearing.

The testimony specifically focused on changes made in the proposed Health and Mental Hygiene section of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget that involve the so-called "temporary operator" clause, which the state could utilize if a public facility is "experiencing serious financial instability" that impacts "essential services within a community."

NUMC spokesman Tom Basile told The Point in an email that 40% of employees had sent Gov. Kathy Hochul a letter protesting those changes. But, he wrote in response to The Point’s queries, "management was not involved in transmitting these letters or the social media you reference."

"It is however all more proof that if Governor Hochul thinks she’s going to game the budget process to attempt to take control of Nassau’s largest hospital, she’s in for massive opposition," Basile wrote.

The proposed changes clarify the law to specify that the temporary operator clause could apply to facilities covered under the "New York Health Care Corporations" section of public authorities law — which includes NUMC, along with several other facilities. It also widens the temporary operator’s authority and expands the time an operator can be in place.

The testimony employees were asked to pass along to the State Senate and Assembly suggests that Hochul’s changes "seem to be a direct and retaliatory response" to the lawsuit NUMC and its public health corporation, Nassau Health Care Corp., have brought against the state.

"These changes are not in the best interest of the public," the testimony says, emphasizing NUMC’s reach and patient volume. "The proposal seems influenced by personal agendas/political gains. And, it weakens NY’s democratic process."

While the testimony attempts to emphasize a connection between the proposed clarifications and the lawsuit, conversations regarding utilizing the temporary operator clause for NUMC began months before any lawsuit was filed.

The information provided to employees sought to explain to workers, in the most ominous terms possible, what the legislative changes could do.

"NYS is trying to change the Temporary Operator law to take over NUMC," it said. "Their current plan implies reducing us to 300 employees and no more lifetime medical."

The flyer goes further, suggesting that installing a temporary operator could mean closing the hospital or reducing its service.

"This is about keeping NUMC open with full service!" it said. "Stand up for NUMC, your job, and your benefits!!!"

Beyond the push inside the hospital, the same ask and some of the same material was provided across various NUMC-related social media pages and groups, in efforts to seek even broader support beyond the hospital’s walls.

"It's not too late to stop the atrocious budget changes the governor is trying to use to steal NUMC," one such post said.

To date, there’s been no indication that state officials or anyone else are planning to significantly reduce jobs or benefits, or close the hospital entirely, and none of the legislative changes talk about any of those issues. The threats suggested in the material may stem from past proposals made by a consultant — ideas that have not been officially embraced by anyone at the state or local level.

But in his response to The Point, Basile wrote that workers — and the "hundreds outside of NUMC from the community" — were responding to the state’s "unwarranted attempts to take over the hospital," adding that the HR department has been fielding questions about the issue recently as well.

"Our employees have every right to advocate on their own behalf for the protection of their jobs and the hospital," he said.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Great Eggs-pectations Point

Local egg price holds steady

Who could have ever imagined eggs would become such a hot item? In Pennsylvania, 100,000 eggs worth about $40,000 were stolen from a trailer. Locally, residents have reported surcharges on bills, such as one listed on a receipt from a Nassau diner for $2.40 for four eggs. And the Georgia-based restaurant chain Waffle House is adding a 50-cent per egg charge to its menu items due to the "nationwide rise in cost of eggs," according to signs posted in its restaurants. Some people are even looking for substitutes for eggs in recipes. Nonetheless, the grocery bill for many around the country continues to rise.

This week, 12 large white eggs are still $6.99 at the same Long Island supermarket we have been monitoring weekly. There was no increase.

— Christine Wallen christine.wallen@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Trump dreams of Gazillions

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/250203nationalcartoons

Reference Point

The Great Neck wall

On Feb. 6, 1969, Newsday’s editorial board led its section with a quote from the poet Robert Frost:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out ...

The verse was from the poem "Mending Walls," an appropriate choice as the board weighed in on a bitterly divisive controversy that had consumed the community of Great Neck for months. Residents in the local school district were set to vote that day on a proposal to bus between 45 and 60 Black children from New York City to attend school in Great Neck.

The board urged a vote of yes, writing: "If they say no, they will exclude the black children from a tremendous opportunity and deprive their own children of a chance to see beyond the borders of their privileged suburb. They will, in effect, have chosen the wall."

At the time, Great Neck was 95% white and known for its progressivism. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at several Great Neck venues in the 1960s and always drew receptive crowds. But the desegregation proposal roiled Great Neck for months. Protests and counterprotests drew hundreds of signatures on competing petitions. A school board meeting in April 1968 drew what some accounts described as an unprecedented 1,000 people. Both sides of the debate took out ads in the Great Neck Record. Some board members began receiving threats.

The district’s students seemed to be solidly on board with the busing proposal; an ad in the local paper headed "Do Not Make Us Be Ashamed of Growing Up in Great Neck" was reportedly signed by some 2,000 students.

The controversy had many modern touches, including the apparent use of disinformation that spread quickly and was difficult to refute — for example, that taxes would rise because of the program and Great Neck students would be bused to "ghetto" schools, neither of which appeared to be true — and a contested vote count in the public referendum.

Turnout was so high that machines could not produce a full and accurate count, according to one local history, and the results were declared invalid though the proposal appeared to be defeated. Newsday’s editorial board on Feb. 8, 1969, referred to "the apparent defeat" of the referendum.

As inconclusive as the tabulation might have been, Newsday’s board was decisive in its judgment. In a piece called "Victory for Fear," the board wrote that "a community noted for generous human concerns has revealed the darker, meaner spirit which lies just beneath the surface of respectable decency in this and other white communities as well."

Long Island always has been plagued by that strain of racism, a point underscored by the editorial cartoon that ran that day. Drawn by Tom Darcy, it depicted a white man labeled "Great Neck" outside a school building on his hands and knees before a young wide-eyed Black student carrying books, with the caption, "Sure I care! Go home, I’ll send you a care package."

Newsday’s board praised the courage of the residents who organized the referendum, the people who voted in favor of it, and the students who so publicly embraced it, lamenting that "their own idealism and moral courage were engulfed at the polls by their elders ..."

The board wrote that it hoped the defeat was a temporary one, even as it sensed the opposite might be true.

"But for the moment," the board wrote, "hope is small that fear and ignorance in the hearts of people will ever be rooted out."

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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