Monday, May 19, 2025
New York lawmakers have approved a $254 billion state budget for Fiscal Year 2026 that includes provisions directly affecting Nassau University Medical Center.
The newly approved Nassau Health Care Corporation board structure, passed on May 7, shifts control from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Democrats. The restructured board — overseeing NUMC in East Meadow and the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale — will expand to 11 members, with a majority appointed by the governor, who will also designate the chair. The county executive will lose approval authority over the corporation’s chief executive.
Appointments to the board could be made as early as June.
Dr. Irina Gelman, the current chair of the NHCC board, also rejected the state’s decision and the bill after approval in a statement shared with the Herald on May 7.
“The state’s hostile takeover of Nassau County’s only public safety-net hospital is unprecedented, immoral and dangerous,” she said. “This disparate targeting of only NHCC and none of the other public benefit corporations in New York state, is indicative of the moral turpitude of Albany using the employees, patients and most vulnerable of Nassau County’s residents as political cannon fodder. By continuing to put politics, any politics left, right or center, before the needs of the people that work and seek care at Nassau Health Care Corporation is deplorable.”
The legislation passed on May 7 also included provisions that allow the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, a public benefit corporation that assumed financial oversight of the hospital system in 2020, to impose additional control over NHCC. The hospital system filed litigation in December accusing NIFA of gross negligence and abuses of power.
Additionally, the bill, which can be read on the state senate’s website, calls for a study to look into “the modernization and revitalization of the Nassau Health Care Corporation.” It directs the NHCC to explore ways to strengthen NUMC and the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility.
“If NUMC’s outgoing leadership had put half as much effort into fiscal management and patient care as they’ve put into politics and propaganda, the hospital wouldn’t be in crisis,” Gordon Tepper, the Long Island spokesman for Hochul said in an email to the Herald. “Their focus has never been on fixing NUMC; it’s been on protecting their own interests. What we are seeing now is a long-overdue intervention to protect patients and save the institution from those who failed it.”
State Assemblyman John Mikulin, a Republican who represents parts of East Meadow, said in an emailed statement he voted “no” on the state budget.
“Unfortunately, this year’s state budget of $254 billion did not deliver for New Yorkers,” he said. “There were several policy decisions included in the FY2025-26 Enacted Budget I could not support, chief among them was the state takeover of the Nassau University Medical Center. NUMC plays a vital role in the Nassau County community and should remain under local control, not Hochul control.”
