NUMC under fire from Cuomo

Daily Point

Shots fly at NUMC

As first days on the job go, Nina Gavan’s wasn’t quite as uneventful as she’d hoped. Gavan has worked at the Nassau University Medical Center since 1987, starting as a volunteer candy striper, quickly transitioning into paid hospital work as a medical aide, attending nursing school and achieving progressively higher managerial positions in both the hospital’s operations and its union, part of the county’s CSEA.

Monday, she took over as president of that hospital’s union, and a couple of hours into her new role, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo used a COVID-19 briefing to criticize NUMC, posting a graphic that showed it had used only 19% of its COVID-19 vaccine allocation. If accurate, the statistic would make NUMC the third-worst public hospital or system in New York for distribution. Cuomo’s attack led Nassau County Executive Laura Curran and Legislature Presiding Officer Rich Nicolello to pile on, too.

But Gavan and other NUMC leaders say it is not true, even as they acknowledge that the ramp-up should have gone faster.

"We are a storage hub for the Pfizer vaccine, because we have the freezers needed to store that vaccine," Gavan told The Point Tuesday. "Much of the vaccine shipped to us we are not even supposed to distribute ourselves, and that’s a big reason the numbers are wrong."

Gavan also acknowledges that the real number of vaccines distributed, 34% of what NUMC has received for its own use, is not optimal, but said the holiday slowdown had an impact, the hospital is increasingly swamped with COVID-19 patients making staffing tight, and NUMC is making progress in ramping up the pace of vaccinations.

She also says claims that her members don’t want to take the vaccine are overhyped. "I think the response has been overwhelmingly positive among staff," Gavan said. "Certainly it can take some education to help people understand it’s safe, but we’re doing that work, and I’m not seeing a huge pushback."

Ron Gurrieri, president of the countywide umbrella CSEA that includes NUMC and 37 other bargaining units, agreed, saying, "I don’t really think it’s people not wanting to take it, and some of the slow progress is understaffing, and some of that is related to COVID illnesses themselves affecting staff."

On that aspect, Gurrieri is an expert. His office generally has a staff of about 15 but he and eight others are currently COVID-positive, one of them is in an intensive care unit, and 15 CSEA members have died from the coronavirus.

There is no finger-pointing going on between the union and management at the financially beleaguered public-mission hospital.

Gurrieri said hospital chief executive Dr. Anthony Boutin is doing a fantastic job of managing through this crisis, a sentiment Gavan and NUMC Board Chairman Bob Detor echoed.

Boutin told The Point there is some trepidation among certain staffers, but it’s being overcome and much of it had to do with simply "not wanting to go first." He estimated 80% to 90% of the 3,300 employees who signed up for the vaccine thus far have taken it, and said he personally is working ceaselessly to convince the fearful, talking to them one-on-one and dispelling misconceptions. A complication, said Boutin, is the confusion over whether the vaccine can be mandated for hospital workers.

"We first were being told that it couldn’t be mandated because it was approved on an emergency basis," Boutin said. "Now the information from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is that we can mandate it to let people come to work, but we can’t fire workers or withhold pay if they refuse."

As for the pace of vaccinations, Boutin said it’s ramping up quickly: the hospital has scheduled 173 vaccinations for Tuesday, 200 Wednesday, 360 on Saturday and 416 on Sunday.

"We also had to be careful to spread the vaccination of employees out over a few weeks because there is a reaction to this vaccine for some, and we need our staff to care for patients," Boutin said. "It’s not a matter of simply lining up the whole emergency room staff and vaccinating them. That wouldn’t work."

—Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

After Moynihan, attention turns to East River Tunnel

As the new Moynihan Train Hall opened Jan. 1, local elected officials turned their attention to the decrepit East River Tunnel, through which Long Island Rail Road trains head into Penn Station each day. In a forceful letter sent Monday to Amtrak Chief Executive William Flynn and Chairman Anthony Coscia, Long Island state senators, along with both county executives and the State Senate and Assembly transportation chairmen, suggested Amtrak should try a new strategy in starting work on the tunnel, which is old and further damaged by Superstorm Sandy. They pointed to the work done on the L train tunnel — which was refurbished without shutting down service — as an example of what’s possible for the East River.

A separate letter from Long Island’s congressional delegation echoed the idea of finding another way to repair the tunnel.

But in a statement released Monday evening, an Amtrak spokesman pushed back, saying the rehab of the East River Tunnel is "extensive work that involves more elements than simpler subway tunnels like the Canarsie tube."

"We continue to look at options for accelerating this work and minimizing impacts on Amtrak and LIRR customers but won’t consider shortcuts to simply defer problems," the statement said.

Perhaps to further explain the differences between the East River Tunnel and the L Train effort, Amtrak offered the elected officials a "comprehensive technical briefing on the matter."

But State Sen. Todd Kaminsky told The Point Tuesday that he wants to go beyond an internal briefing, and that he’d advocate holding state legislative hearings on the issue.

"I think it’s sad that instead of saying we’ll study this comprehensively, or we’ll reconsider it, or we’ll have a meeting, they’re just reflexively saying ‘no.’ I think it’s part of the problem that they’re not willing to entertain new technology, new ways of doing things, or being open-minded," Kaminsky said. "I think this pandemic for a lot of reasons needs to change everyone’s way of operating and Amtrak doesn’t seem to want to do that."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, meanwhile, said in its own statement that it supports "any solution, like the proven L Train tunnel fix, that will deliver these important repairs more quickly, while also minimizing impact to customers."

Amtrak officials have said that they have to wait for the completion of East Side Access — the LIRR connection to Grand Central Terminal — to address the repairs needed to the East River Tunnel, and have said full closure of the tunnel is necessary.

But in their letter, elected officials, including Kaminsky, said that idea "deserves reconsideration." The letter quoted a Newsday editorial from 2017 that said more urgency was needed, and noted that little has changed since then.

"Astoundingly, however, as we enter 2021 there is no operational plan to fix the tunnels and it clearly does not seem to be a priority for Amtrak," the letter said.

A spokesman for Sen. Chuck Schumer noted that Schumer had secured more than $400 million in federal funds for the East River Tunnel project.

"We want Amtrak and the MTA to use that money," the spokesman said.

And Schumer’s spokesman noted that making progress on a host of transportation infrastructure projects, including the East River Tunnel and the Gateway project to rebuild the train tunnels under the Hudson River, "will be a priority of the Senator’s in the Biden administration."

Now it’s likely that the issue of what to do with all these aging tunnels will be decided by "Amtrak Joe," who is so enamored of the rail system that the incoming president is considering arriving for his inauguration on the train he took daily to commute to Washington from Delaware.

—Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Much-needed help

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Final Point

Targeting Zeldin's seat in 2022

The last campaign for New York’s 1st Congressional District is hardly in the rearview mirror, but some Democratic hopefuls are already looking to run against Rep. Lee Zeldin next cycle.

That includes 9/11 responder and advocate John Feal, who has been tweeting his displeasure about Zeldin’s support for President Donald Trump.

"Start working out Lee for 2022 because I am a ball of energy!" Feal wrote in one December tweet.

"I am not Tim, Perry or Nancy," he wrote in another, referring to Democrats Bishop, Gershon, and Goroff, all vanquished by Zeldin.

Feal confirmed to The Point in a Monday email that he’s thinking about running against Zeldin and that "the past couple of cycles some DC, NYC and NYS operatives have tried talking me into running. I always said at my pace."

He added that he was "not happy with the Smithtown/Suffolk Democrats who put people up to lose."

Also eyeing a run is Chris Murray, chair of the board of trustees for Suffolk County Community College.

"I am definitely considering it, very strongly considering it," Murray told The Point Monday.

The partner at Long Island law firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek has donated thousands of dollars to LI Democrats in recent years, and said he is starting to contact county political leaders and put together a mechanism to raise money.

Both point to Zeldin’s proximity to Trump as a factor in their displeasure with him, a factor that could grow depending on the Shirley Republican’s involvement in Wednesday’s election certification vote in the House.

Still, anti-Trump fervor didn’t prove sufficient for Democrats in CD1 in the last two cycles. Gershon, who lost by about 4% in the 2018 general and failed to win the primary in 2020, told The Point he has "no thoughts or plans to run again."

His successor Goroff lost by an even wider, nearly 10-point margin.

Shoshana Hershkowitz, founder of the group Suffolk Progressives, said she thinks the last election cycle has "sobered" a lot of people and Zeldin’s outperformance of Trump showed how taking on the race is a big undertaking.

Still, she thinks "the right populist message" could resonate in future races.

"This is still a winnable district," she said.

—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano