A United States attorney is calling on a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the Federal Emergency Management Agency earlier this year by a group of Long Beach residents seeking to block the release of $154 million in FEMA funds to South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside.
The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Robert Capers, contends that the funds are being spent appropriately, and he argues that any claims that the lack of a full-service hospital would put barrier island residents in jeopardy are speculative.
Members of the Beach to Bay Civic Association filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Central Islip in July. The group is seeking to have a new hospital built on the barrier island after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the Long Beach Medical Center and forced it to close in 2012.
The suit claims that the federal funding was meant to restore medical services in Long Beach after the Long Beach Medical shuttered, and that FEMA violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment by allowing the bulk of the money to be spent in Oceanside and disregarding community input. South Nassau, which acquired LBMC in 2014, was not named in the suit.
In September,
FEMA approved a plan that would allow South Nassau to build a permanent emergency medical facility in Long Beach and expand its Oceanside campus, using disaster relief funds originally earmarked for LBMC after the storm. South Nassau plans to build a $40 million medical pavilion and 24-hour emergency department on the former LBMC campus.
FEMA and South Nassau officials say that alternative-use legislation under the Stafford Act — introduced by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer after Sandy and approved by Congress in 2014 — allows the hospital to use the funding to also bolster services and infrastructure at its Oceanside campus.
Beach to Bay is seeking an injunction to halt the distribution of the FEMA funds and an advisory opinion from the court to determine whether the money is being used appropriately.
“Beach to Bay believes that the South Nassau proposal is neither a medically sound strategy nor legally justified,” Ed Glister, a member of Beach to Bay, told the City Council at its Dec. 5 meeting.
Capers said in a Nov. 30 letter to U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley that the law gives FEMA the discretion to make such decisions without judicial review and that the court does not have jurisdiction over Beach to Bay’s claims.
“The plaintiffs do not have a legally protected interest in a full-service hospital on the island,” Capers wrote, “and any damages that they may suffer from FEMA’s decision to fund SNCH’s improvements to its Oceanside location are speculative at best.”
Capers also called for the due process claims to be dismissed, saying that the plaintiffs cannot establish a property interest or show that the process FEMA used was “constitutionally deficient.”
A FEMA spokesman declined to comment citing the ongoing litigation.
Francis McQuade, an attorney representing Beach to Bay, said he is confident that the case will not be dismissed, and expects the judge to reach a decision early next year.
“The game is on now, and that was the first move and they kind of ham-handedly tried to dismiss it,” McQuade said. “I don’t know why FEMA and the U.S. attorney’s office would invest so much energy when all we’re asking for is an advisory opinion and something that’s in the public spirit — the suit is not to make money or cause trouble. I think their understanding of the alternative use program flies in the face of the Stafford Act. There has to be something more than what they are proposing.”
South Nassau officials say that the proposed emergency room and SNCH’s expansion, rather than a hospital, would better serve residents in Long Beach and surrounding communities, adding that a full-fledged hospital is not financially viable.
The proposed three-story, 50,000-square-foot Long Beach facility would have a permanent emergency department and suites for a range of other services, hospital officials said.
Beach to Bay maintains that the proposed medical pavilion would be inadequate to meet the needs of a “geographically isolated” community, and could not accept ambulances with patients suffering from certain “time-critical” medical conditions, including trauma, stroke and other emergencies. It has also cited the economic toll the hospital’s closure had on the community and loss of doctors in town. The group has pushed for a smaller hospital, with fewer beds than the LBMC’s 162, offering in-patient care that it says would be financially viable.
Last week, the group called on the City Council not to approve any measures that could allow South Nassau to move forward with the construction of the medical pavilion until the lawsuit is resolved.
“The basis for this request is that if the arbiter agrees with our suit, then the resulting construction would be decidedly different than what South Nassau is currently proposing,” Glister said.
Beach to Bay also called on the city to deny any rezoning of the property that could allow for the potential construction of residential buildings.
“Many Long Beach residents are concerned that South Nassau’s primary motive is to sell this Long Beach property to realize significant financial gain,” he said.
Hospital officials said that the funding could only be used for capital projects tied to healthcare services, and have emphasized that there are no plans to sell the property.
FEMA’s approval paved the way for the design phase of the project and kicked off a lengthy regulatory and environmental review process — it also requires approvals from the city of Long Beach and Town of Hempstead — that is expected to take at least 18 months before any work begins, officials said. The work is expected to be completed by 2020.
“We’re going ahead with the project as planned,” said Joe Calderone, South Nassau’s senior vice president of corporate communications and development. “Any delays that might be put in front of us would only hurt the residents of the city of Long Beach, because it would delay a permanent home for the emergency department.”
