NUMC goes to Albany

Daily Point

Workers, lawmakers seek help to close budget gap; Thomas talks 'mismanagement'

Nassau University Medical Center employees, led by interim chief executive Megan Ryan, headed to Albany Tuesday to seek state funds to help close the safety net hospital’s budget hole.

“Nassau needs NUMC!” they chanted during a news conference in a hectic state capital, on a day when the Senate and Assembly released their budget proposals.

Joining them were State Sens. Kevin Thomas, Steve Rhoads and Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, and Assembs. Taylor Darling and John Mikulin.

While all of them called for state funding for NUMC, Thomas was the only one to couple that ask with references to “mismanagement and financial instability” at the hospital — and a request that NUMC accept the state Health Department’s requirements, laid out in a recent letter to the hospital, that included the need for detailed plans and a full search for a new CEO.

“Our community deserves better transparency and accountability,” said Thomas, who opened the news conference. “Therefore, while I will fight tooth and nail to secure the funding NUMC needs to continue its crucial mission, I also want to make sure it survives in the future by addressing some of these issues.”

Once Thomas was done, however, Long Island’s other political players stuck to NUMC's talking points, emphasizing the state’s responsibility — without any reference to NUMC’s role.

“While [hospital executives are] taking care of their fiscal house and while they’re pursuing better management, the reality is that New York State created this problem and New York State must step in to fix this problem,” Rhoads said.

Darling emphasized the “very short window” the state has to save NUMC. Consultants for the Nassau Interim Finance Authority have said NUMC could see its cash position go negative by next month.

But Darling didn’t mention the state’s request that any funding be contingent on changes at NUMC.

“For me, I’ve seen what I need to see and know that the hospital is prepared to be great stewards of the funding we give them,” Darling told The Point after the event.

Interestingly, one of the key “stewards of the funding” — NUMC chairman Matthew Bruderman — wasn’t with the hospital’s group in Albany, and his name never came up during the news conference.

Perhaps he said enough at last week’s town hall.

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

Pencil Point

Memory problems

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Final Point

Nassau GOP struggling past its Santos fiasco

The 3rd Congressional District remains a difficult playing field for the Nassau Republican organization in what can still be called the post-George Santos period.

Consider the full arc of the story. In 2020, the district, which extends into Queens, saw Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi beat the then-unknown Santos. In 2022, with Suozzi running for the Democratic nomination for governor, the fabulist Santos won in a red-wave fluke against Democrat Robert Zimmerman, causing far bigger headaches for Joseph Cairo and his county committee than if his nominee had lost.

After Santos was expelled, the relatively bipartisan Suozzi won a special election that dominated national headlines against Cairo’s nominee, Mazi Melesa Pilip. Now, Cairo and his crew face the harrowing challenge of peddling another candidate against Suozzi for November. His preference, Mike LiPetri, faces a primary challenge from financially well-endowed newcomer Greg Hach. Another primary candidate is Jim Toes, president and CEO of the Security Traders Association.

LiPetri served one term in the Assembly after unseating incumbent Democrat Christine Pellegrino in 2018. Two years later, he lost a primary for the 2nd Congressional District to now-Rep. Andrew Garbarino, generating some harsh friction with the Republican organization in Suffolk, where most of the district is located.

That county’s GOP committee, for example, tweeted this during the 2018 primary: “Mike LiPetri was a registered Democrat who worked for NYC Riot Mayor Bill de Blasio! How can we trust he will vote Republican?” (LiPetri had been an assistant corporation counsel for the city during the de Blasio administration.) Opponents also called him, for some reason, an “AOC operative.”

But by 2020, while in the Assembly, LiPetri publicly denounced de Blasio’s strange run for president, saying in a televised interview that the mayor was nowhere to be found and “homelessness is rampant. Criminals are emboldened. Police are disrespected.”

LiPetri, an attorney, recently left Park Strategies, the consulting and lobbying firm founded by former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, to focus on his candidacy. State records viewed by The Point show that while with the firm, LiPetri has been registered to lobby for more than 30 entities including the Suffolk County PBA Inc. and the Nassau Health Care Corporation, the corporate name for the Nassau University Medical Center which has many beefs with the state.

Hach, a longtime labor attorney, has been needling the party-favored LiPetri on social media, linking the latter’s candidacy, for example, to what Hach calls “Grandpa @aldamatoNY still calling the shots on #Long Island.” One posting on “X” referred to LiPetri as “a swamp-creature registered lobbyist” for D’Amato whom Hach refers to as “Chairman Cairo’s old Hempstead Town Board colleague.”

County GOP insiders emphatically denied to The Point that D’Amato pushed Cairo to endorse LiPetri, who screened for the party designation, as did Hach, who was also passed up for the spot in last month’s special election in CD3. Hach backers deny any anti-Cairo animus but say they support him as a “non-machine” candidate. Both Hach and LiPetri screened with the county committee for last month’s special before Pilip was chosen.

Toes, the third man trying to get on the ballot, is also taking a populist tone, saying in a statement: “Local Republicans deserve to pick their candidate to compete in November's General Election and I'm excited for the June 25th GOP primary. My father was an NYPD captain and I'm following his lead by committing to protect the people of District-03 from bad actors and bad policies that threaten to harm them.”

Petitions now in circulation are due to be filed with election boards across the state between April 1 and April 4.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

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