Nassau University Medical Center has faced financial problems over the years, but the appointment of Gov. Kathy Hochul to Richard Kessel as head of the governing body he asked with a new shame.
East Meadow Hospital has long been accused of financial mismanagement, but its board hopes the appointment of its former attorney general, Meg Ryan, to run the facility in December 2024 will change things.
Yet within six months, the state seized the hospital and forced Ryan out after accusing Albany of failing to provide its share of Medicaid funding, amounting to $1 billion over 20 years.
Those events sparked a flurry of allegations, lawsuits and investigations — and this month Richard Kessel was named chairman of Nassau Health Care Corp., which oversees the hospital.
View funding positions to start burning public funds.
Kessel is like that bad pen that keeps coming back: Governors and local officials tapped him repeatedly despite his dark background.
Back in the late ’80s, Kessel opposed the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant and ended up taking responsibility for closing it under Governor Mario Cuomo – leaving Long Islanders on the hook for billions with nothing to show for it.
Later, at the Long Island Power Authority, he grew the staff from about 2 to over 100, including many of his relatives and political friends.
The state inspector general also confirmed that “unfairly [used] taxpayer money to entertain some powerful friends.”
In 2011, Kessel ran for the New York Power Authority as the state regulator’s investigation showed how the agency spent hundreds of thousands on holiday parties, picnics, awards, gifts, festivals and buying AARP memberships for retirees.
The IG report that year also accused him of “obvious conflicts of interest that he failed to disclose.”
Even all that failed to stop him from winning important new appointments: In 2018, then-Nassau County Executive Laura Curran tapped him to lead the county’s Industrial Development Agency; by 2023, he was out again, amid an investigation into ethics violations, including whether the donations he made through that organization were inappropriate.
No matter: Hochul quickly named him chairman and director of the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority that year — a move former Port Authority chairman and NIFA member George Marlin exasperated was “like putting the fox in the henhouse.”
Now he is going to lead the NHCC. Seriously?
Hochul made some terrible decisions, but putting this fox in another henhouse is a direct invitation to corruption.
