NIFA scrubs in

Daily Point

Taking the temperature

The Nassau Interim Finance Authority will move to exert control over the Nassau University Medical Center at NIFA’s board meeting next week, The Point has learned. The hospital’s debt of $188 million, which is guaranteed by the county, gives the control board justification to take such action.

The move, which NIFA Chairman Adam Barsky mulled publicly late last year, would give NIFA the power to approve or reject all hospital contracts over a dollar value that is yet to be determined. It also would compel NUMC to provide the county and NIFA with information on the hospital’s finances and operations or face civil and criminal penalties. 

The action would give NIFA the power to freeze the wages of hospital workers, as it did to the county itself from 2011 to 2014, saving the county (and costing workers) about $230 million. NIFA could use the threat of that extreme measure to push for lesser accommodations from CSEA, the union which represents 3,000 hospital employees.

In December, Barsky told Newsday he was alarmed by a June audit of NUMC’s financial statements by consultant Grant Thornton that warned of substantial doubt about the hospital’s ability to continue as a “going concern.” NUMC had losses of $153 million from 2014 through 2018. 

NIFA recently issued a request for proposals to hire a hospital turnaround consultant to come up with a plan, even as increasing levels of chaos have swirled around the hospital. On Jan. 16, County Executive Laura Curran named longtime health care executive Robert Detor to succeed George Tsunis as chairman. CSEA activists protested at the meeting where Tsunis handed off the baton, and board members tried to name an interim chief executive to run the hospital’s day-to-day operations. 

The board did not have that right legally, because it rests with the board chair and Curran. But Detor named chief medical officer Anthony Boutin, whom the board had tried to install in its coup as interim chief executive, anyway.

Boutin became NUMC’s fifth chief executive in the past five years, on the same day that health care executive John Gupta, the last finalist for the permanent chief executive job, withdrew his name to accept another position. Thomas Stokes, a former deputy county executive under Thomas Suozzi, had been the other finalist, but withdrew last week.

The one peaceful sign was that Jerry Laricchiuta, president of Nassau Civil Service Local 830, which represents NUMC workers, praised Detor's decision to elevate Boutin. But it might be the last thing Laricchiuta sees the same way as the county or NIFA for a long time. Both bodies look to restructure the operations, finances and physical plant of a hospital that is reeling, and looking for increasing help to achieve it from Northwell Health, whose involvement CSEA is dead-set against.

—Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

Political page turners

Every day brings another way that John Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened” roils the national conversation. The former national security adviser’s book isn’t due out until mid-March. But it’s already caught up in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, given reported details from the unpublished manuscript alleging that Trump tied aid to Ukraine to investigations into the Bidens. 

Now the White House has threatened to block the book, saying it contains classified information, while publisher Simon & Schuster watches it climb the Amazon bestseller list. 

The Point asked publishing insiders for examples of other books that made a dent in D.C. before pub day. 

Before earlier Trump-related examples like James Comey’s boy scout book and Michael Wolff’s gossipy, disturbing, now-all-but-eclipsed White House story “Fire and Fury,” a pair of books about the Reagans captured Beltway attention. 

Former President Ronald Reagan chief of staff Don Regan’s 1988 book, “For the Record,” was the source of the juicy detail that the first lady regularly consulted with an astrologer.

Juicier still was Kitty Kelley’s 1991 celebrity biography, “Nancy Reagan,” which alleged an affair with Frank Sinatra and a general picture of the first lady as a cold, tactical, self-invented figure. 

The book was the talk of Washington even before release: “Indeed, the impact is as if someone had rolled a hand grenade down Pennsylvania Avenue,” the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Then there was “Primary Colors,” a 1996 novel about the Clintons and the press, which was originally published anonymously (columnist Joe Klein ultimately admitted he wrote it). The authorial guessing game began almost a year before publication, with the manuscript cover announcing a “guess-who campaign pitched to national TV, radio and print,” according to The Washington Post. 

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s 1974 book, “All the President’s Men,” was a monumental publishing event and led to the famous Robert Redford-Dustin Hoffman movie. 

But their writing already had its major political effect in their original news stories about Watergate. 

The other examples are no Bolton bombshell, either. Regan didn’t take down Reagan and Kelley’s book came out when The Great Communicator was on to post-presidential scandals. “Primary Colors” was basically catnip for the chattering class. 

Meanwhile, Bolton’s (still unpublished) contribution appears to be shifting senators and scaring the commander in chief.

—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

Everything is ok

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

Final Point

All bets are on

Two of America’s more speculative enterprises, sports and politics, have marquee events coming up — the Super Bowl on Sunday and the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

For those who like to put some money on their speculations, oddsmakers are offering some propositions that cleverly combine the two pursuits.

At one offshore online sportsbook, BetOnline, you can wager on whether the winning team — either the San Francisco 49ers or the Kansas City Chiefs — will make the once-customary visit to the White House. (For recent context, the last two winners did not make a White House visit, and in 2017, only about half of the invited players on the victorious New England Patriots attended.)

Another proposition has to do with whether any players will take a knee during the national anthem, which seems like a gimme since the only three players who continued to protest in that way during the regular season are not on either Super Bowl team.

One of the more creative propositions requires more analysis of both football and Trumpology: Which will be higher — President Donald Trump’s approval rating the day after the game, or the yardage of the longest pass reception in the Super Bowl? Trump’s approval rating has hovered around 40 percent, depending on the poll, but the yardage part of the wager is favored at the moment.

Will bets on that one correlate with the bettors’ political affiliations? That’s one result you can’t wager on.

—Michael Dobie @mwdobie