Quite a night

Daily Point

"He says he’s not dead!"

It’s not dead yet.

A week that felt like a bit of a takeoff on a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ended with the news that the effort to separate the two top jobs at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had stalled — again — but still has life in it even as the Albany legislative session came to a close, for now.

The bill began the week as a sure thing, a move that would lead Sarah Feinberg and Janno Lieber to become the next chairwoman and chief executive, respectively, of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. A news release from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo Tuesday announced it as if it were a done deal.

Within a day, it was … supposedly … dead. State senators objected to the process, to Feinberg and to Cuomo’s heavy hand, and the bill was pulled.

By Thursday morning, it was back, part of a deal that also involved the so-called Clean Slate legislation, which would seal most criminal records after a certain period of time. Thursday night, however, the State Senate completed its work without dealing with either the MTA or the Clean Slate bills. The Assembly, meanwhile, passed the MTA legislation in the wee hours of Friday morning.

Sources told The Point the Senate’s decision was really about problems with the Clean Slate bill, which was held up in the Assembly, and not the MTA issue. But members of the Senate were reluctant to move forward on the MTA without a deal on Clean Slate. So, neither got done.

This is a marked departure from years past, when Cuomo had greater power to persuade, and when he would play a far bigger role in hammering out last-minute deals with the leaders of the Senate and Assembly. The Senate’s decision not to take up one of Cuomo’s big priorities before the official end of session, sources said, is indicative of the Albany power shift. And even the objections to the separation of the MTA roles and the Feinberg pick were, in part, a rebuke of the governor’s control. Senate deputy majority leader Michael Gianaris said earlier in the week that there were concerns that Feinberg "seems to relish the idea of taking the podium to score political points with the governor."

But none of that means this is over. Even Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins’ statement Thursday night indicated that the official end of session was not, in reality, the end.

"We stand ready to come back when and if necessary," the statement said.

Sources said that’s exactly what is likely to happen. Expect the Senate to return to work somewhere after the June 22 primary, but before July 4. At that point, lawmakers could address the desire to separate the chair and CEO jobs — and also hold confirmation hearings for Feinberg and Lieber.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all a just-delayed done deal.

"Ideally, this would have had time to be deliberated. A lot of us wanted that," Gianaris told The Point. "Now, we can talk about it and think about it for a couple of weeks and do this the right way."

That timing could get interesting. After all, the next MTA board meeting — which outgoing MTA chair Pat Foye, along with Feinberg and Lieber, would be expected to attend, is June 23. And Foye is expected to leave the MTA at the end of July.

That doesn’t leave much time for any more resurrections if the next attempt to get this done fails.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Talking Point

First NUMC meeting

When Bob Detor took the reins of the Nassau University Medical Center last January, the tone of his first meeting as chairman of the board was something between a food fight and a war.

Edward Farbenblum told The Point that his first meeting as chairman, Thursday night, went off a lot more smoothly.

But considering Farbenblum’s opening statement, and its nods to union leaders and thousands of employees who want the financially floundering public-mission hospital to keep operating as is, the relative peace was not surprising.

Farbenblum told the board his vision includes bringing in outside turnaround consultants to devise a plan, and hiring a turnaround officer, at least temporarily, to carry out that plan. He used a catchphrase, "Without margin, there is no mission," to emphasize his commitment to getting NUMC’s finances in order. And he told The Point he would not be surprised to see the least-utilized services NUMC offers go by the wayside.

But his remarks to the board also included clear signals he is listening to the CSEA.

"Frontline staff and labor are best placed to solve specific problems and the only people who can make this change happen," Farbenblum said at one point.

He emphasized the need to open a catheterization lab at the hospital, the lack of which limits its cardiology business, a longtime talking point of CSEA regional president Jerry Laricchiuta.

The CSEA was at odds with Detor from the start.

Farbenblum also told The Point he wants to emphasize going after great doctors for NUMC, saying "without them, a hospital is nothing but bricks and mortar." And he said he believes the hospital has a crucial mission taking care of Nassau’s underserved population of uninsured patients and Medicaid recipients that the area’s other health care organizations don’t strive to serve.

Asked why he took on the challenge of trying to manage a facility with nearly $1 billion in liabilities and so much going against it, Farbenblum said, "At the end of the day we will all have to account for our lives, and I would like to have my good deeds include helping to save the hospital."

So far, the CSEA approves of his methods, and for County Executive Laura Curran, who picked him, his plan may have just the right timing. She has an election in November. Detor was pushing for big union-angering changes, fast.

And engaging turnaround consultants and letting them devise a plan that would then have to be implemented likely places the biggest moves after Curran’s election, whether they include bolstering the hospital or shrinking it.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

Attacked

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

Final Point

About last night's debate

Long Islanders tuning into Thursday night’s New York City mayoral debate might have been very familiar with some of the major issues.

There was the plan to toll vehicles coming into parts of Manhattan, which will certainly apply to lots of Nassau and Suffolk residents visiting or commuting into the city.

Four out of five of the candidates on stage were full steam ahead for this "congestion pricing" plan, which could reduce traffic and help fund the MTA. One of those supporters was Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner whose father, Bruce McIver, was president of the Long Island Rail Road in the 1980s. The one outlier candidate was businessman Andrew Yang, who said he’d support being "flexible" on the timing given the region’s recovery.

Yang was also at the center of another hot-button topic that has been big politics on Long Island: bail reform. While discussing a collection of recent cases of street violence, Yang said he wanted to "dig into" the case of a man who allegedly punched an Asian woman in an unprovoked recent attack in Chinatown.

Yang pointed out that the man had been arrested multiple times over the last year, including for violence. "And he was walking our streets," Yang said, adding that we have to examine "every step" of what allowed the man to be on the streets, including bail laws.

The same sentiment has been heard from politicians across Long Island, particularly Republicans who have highlighted individual criminal cases and criticized upticks in certain city crime numbers.

Progressive candidates in the mayoral race have a different take on how to safeguard the city (where crime is still at relative historic lows), focusing more on community-based efforts and mental health. Emblematic of that less police-centric philosophy was former Mayor Bill de Blasio lawyer Maya Wiley’s somewhat confusing answer on Thursday about whether guns should be taken away from city cops. When pressed she said she was "not prepared to make that decision in a debate." By Friday, she’d issued a statement saying, "Of course I don’t support that."

As others on the left falter, Wiley has been shoring up progressive support from figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams heading into early voting this weekend. But it is Yang and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams who have been consistently toward the top in polls for much of the campaign season, with their focus on public safety and other more centrist or right-leaning positions — a phenomenon, again, that might be familiar to Long Island political observers.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

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